Under inflation targeting in South Africa, it is important to monitor and forecast changes in prices, not only for aggregate measures of the consumer price index, but also its underlying sub-components. Hypotheses about sectoral transmission of policy and shocks are often more specific than...

Inflation is a far from homogeneous phenomenon, a fact often neglected in modeling consumer price inflation.  Using a novel methodology grounded in theory, the ten sub-components of the consumer price index (excluding mortgage interest rates), are modeled separately and forecast,...

Understanding how import prices adjust to exchange rates helps anticipate inflation effects and monetary policy responses. This article examines exchange rate pass-through to the monthly import price index in South Africa during 1980-2009. Short-horizon pass-through estimates are calculated...

A sizeable literature examines exchange rate pass-through to disaggregated import prices, but few micro-studies focus on consumer prices. This article explores exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices in South Africa, for 2002-2007, using a unique data set of highly disaggregated data at...

The econometric models of Janine Aron and John Muellbauer of Oxford predict that deflation, or at least an end to inflation, are on the way, but they do not foresee a lost decade for the U.S., Europe, or the global economy.

This paper reviews the design and performance of monetary policy in South Africa (SA) during 1994-2004. Quantitative indexes of transparency reveal a strong rise in the transparency and accountability of monetary policy between 1994 and 2004. Inflation and interest rate expectations data and...

Inflation is a far from homogeneous phenomenon, a fact often neglected in modeling consumer price inflation. Using a novel methodology grounded in theory, the ten sub-components of the consumer price index (excluding mortgage interest rates), are modeled separately and forecast,...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. Much of the empirical literature is marred by poor controls for the common drivers both of house prices and consumption, including income, income growth expectations, interest rates, credit supply...