This paper analyses the intertemporal hedging demand for stocks and bonds in South Africa (SA), the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). The analysis is done using an approximate solution method for the optimal consumption and wealth portfolio problem of an infinitely long-lived...

South Africa has undergone significant trade liberalization since the end of apartheid. Average protection has fallen while openness has increased. However, economic growth has been insufficient to make inroads into the high unemployment levels. Poverty levels have also risen. The country’s...

The debate about the consequences of economic growth on poverty and welfare was recently rekindled in South Africa by announcements that the government would be targeting a sustainable growth rate of 6 percent per annum under the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa...

This paper focuses on the effects that a higher tariff on agriculture and food imports could have on poverty and the macroeconomy using a top down computable general equilibrium microsimulation model. This question is of broader relevance to developing countries that may be contemplating the use...

This paper investigates causality between oil prices and the prices of agricultural commodities in South Africa. We use daily data covering the period April 19, 2005 to July 31, 2014 for oil prices and the prices of soya beans, wheat, sunflower and corn. The test for Granger causality in...

The significant change in South Africa’s trade patterns over the past two decades should affect the impact of shocks in the rest of the world on the country, since South Africa is a small open economy. We investigate the effect with the use of a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model from...

We develop a structural cointegrated vector autoregressive (VAR) model with weakly exogenous foreign variables, suitable for a small open economy like South Africa. This type of model is known as an augmented vector error correction model (VECM), referred to by VECX*. We compile the foreign...

This paper reports on a study to provide insights into the magnitude of the shocks associated with the recent global economic crisis in macroeconomic terms in South Africa, the country’s capacity to withstand or cushion these shocks, and the extent of fragility in terms of poverty levels and...

This study determines whether the global vector autoregressive (GVAR) approach provides better forecasts of key South African variables than a vector error correction model (VECM) and a Bayesian vector autoregressive (BVAR) model augmented with foreign variables. The paper considers both a small...