The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that have constrained South Africa's growth since the end of apartheid by comparing its GDP components and its saving and investment performance with those of 10 faster-growing countries. The study finds that sluggish investment has undermined...

This paper applies a state-space approach to estimate the implicit inflation target of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) since the adoption of the Inflation Targeting (IT) framework. The paper's findings are two. First, although the official inflation target range is 3.6 percent, in...

We examine the relationship between South African Rand and gold price volatility using monthly data for the period 1980-2010. Our main findings is that prior to capital account liberalization the causality runs from South African Rand to gold price volatility but the causality runs the other way...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. DEBT SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS AND RISK -- III. DEBT DYNAMICS AND THE CONDUCT OF FISCAL POLICY -- IV. RISKS TO DEBT SUSTAINABILITY IN FIVE EMERGING MARKET ECONOMIES -- V. CONCLUSION -- Appendix -- REFERENCES.

This paper examines the role of the derivatives market in South Africa and provides policy options for promoting the development of derivatives markets in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa's derivatives market has grown rapidly in recent years, supporting capital inflows and helping market...

Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g....

Based on stylized evidence showing variation of the Gini coefficient of income inequality across skill cohorts and on the rapid rise in trade in technology-intensive goods, the ripple effects of technology transmission and income inequality are explored in a global Computable General Equilibrium...

Spillovers from South Africa into the other members of the Souther Africa Customs Union (known as the BLNS for Botstwana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) are substantial reflecting sizeable real and financial interlinkages. However, shocks to real GDP growth in South Africa do not seem to...

We investigate the relation between changes in tax composition and long-run economic growth using a new dataset covering a broad cross-section of countries with different income levels. We specifically consider 69 countries with at least 20 years of observations on total tax revenue during the...

Going forward, Korea faces two closely related challenges: sustaining economic growth against the backdrop of a rapidly aging population and ameliorating income inequality. This paper argues that a gradual increase in social spending could promote more sustainable and inclusive growth in Korea....