This paper assesses the impact of a monetary policy shock on 15 key macroeconomic variables of South Africa, in the pre- and post-inflation targeting periods. For this purpose, we use a Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) model comprising of 107 monthly time series over two equal...

Two recent studies have found markedly different measures of the welfare cost of inflation in South Africa, obtained through the estimation of long-run money demand relationships using cointegration and long-horizon approaches. Realizing that the monetary aggregate and the interest rate...

This paper assesses the impact of monetary policy on house price inflation for the nine census divisions of the US economy using a factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR), estimated a large data set comprising of 126 quarterly series over the period 1976:01 to 2005:02. The results based on the impulse...

We examine the role of commercial banks in monetary transmission in a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR). A FAVAR exploits a large number of macroeconomic indicators to identify monetary policy shocks, and we add commonly used lending aggregates and lending data at the bank level....

This paper assesses the impact of monetary policy on real house price growth in South Africa using a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR), estimated based on a large data set comprising of 246 quarterly series over the period 1980:01 to 2006:04. The results based on the impulse...

Empirical evidence on the effect of defense spending on US output is at best mixed. Against this backdrop, this paper assesses the impact of a positive defense spending shock on the growth rate of real GNP using a FAVAR model estimated with 116 variables spanning the quarterly period of 1976:01...

This paper bridges the new open economy factor augmented VAR (FAVAR) studies with the recent findings in the business cycle synchronization literature emphasizing the importance of regional factors. That is, we estimate and identify a three block FAVAR model with separate world, regional and...

This paper assesses the predictive ability of asset prices relative to other variables in forecasting inflation and real GDP growth in South Africa. A total of 42 asset and non-asset predictor variables are considered. Forecasts of inflation and real GDP growth are computed using both individual...

This paper investigates the direction of causal relationship between taxes and expenditure in South Africa, using quarterly data for the period 1960:1-2006:2, and annual data for 1960 to 2005. For both frequencies, gross domestic product and government debt are included in the VAR system as...

The literature on causality takes contradictory stands regarding the direction of causal relationships based on whether one uses temporally aggregated or systematically sampled data. Using the relationship between a nominal target and the instrument used to achieve it, as an example, we show...