South Africa’s macroeconomic policies face a complicated task of balancing between supporting domestic demand and maintaining stability. The Selected Issues paper for South Africa discusses economic development and policies. Although the opening output gap and declining employment do call for...

When faced with a relative price shock, monetary authorities often aim to contain its second round effects on inflation while accepting first round effects. We analyze the experience of South Africa and other inflation targeters to explore whether and when this policy prescription implies...

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....

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country

This paper examines whether a mix of tighter fiscal policy, looser monetary policy, and greater reserve build-up would increase growth and depreciate the rand in real terms. The experience of South Africa over the last twenty years is looked at using a number of econometric techniques that...

This paper provides an assessment of the South African potential output for the period 1985-2010 by applying both structural and nonstructural estimation techniques. The analysis suggests that, while potential output growth steadily accelerated in the post-apartheid era to about 3 1/2 percent...

This paper develops an empirical model of the drivers of portfolio flows, and concludes that South Africa has indeed received greater bond flows than can be explained by macroeconomic fundamentals. Bond flows in the four quarters through 2010:Q3 not only exceeded the average over the past 10...