This paper uses a structural VAR methodology to identify aggregate demand and supply shocks to real output for the South African economy. Demand shocks, in turn, are separated into fiscal and monetary shocks. The model is estimated with quarterly data over two overlapping samples: 1960Q2--2006Q4...

Monetary authorities have been implicated in the financial crisis of 2007-2008. John Muellbauer, for example, has blamed what he thought was initially inadequate policy responses by central banks to the crisis on their models, which are, in his words, “overdue for the scrap heap”. This paper...

The history of public debt reflects the cumulative effect of fiscal decisions and real outcomes in the economy. In the South African case the published record on public debt distorts the historical perspective on the associated fiscal decisions. This note shows the impact of adjusting the South...

Inflation targeting is a forward-looking framework for monetary policy that has brought unprecedented transparency to the process of monetary policy. This paper aims to assess the degree to which the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has, since the...

Local and international research has identified a bias in favour of male students with MCQs. If correctly identified, this bias holds implications for reasonable assessment strategies in economics courses. A standard method used in the literature is to relate student performance to various...

This paper aims to describe, identify underlying factors and seek explanations for South Africa's economic recovery since 1994, as evidenced by trends in growth and investment. Compared with an international peer group, the initial conditions for a dramatic growth recovery were inauspicious in...

This research challenges previous findings regarding the robustness of the African growth dummy by expanding the list of variables to include those suggested by Easterly and Levine (1998) and Sachs and Warner (1997b). Using the Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates approach, this paper...

"The paper provides an ex post analysis of the financial burden and economic benefits of the World Cup (WC) in Germany 2006. Based on the usual cost-benefit measures, the experience of WC 2006 appears to be in line with existing empirical research on large sporting events and sports stadiums,...

This paper uses a structural vector-autoregression approach to discuss the cyclicality of fiscal and monetary policy in South Africa since 1994. There is substantial South African literature on this topic, but much disagreement remains. Though not undisputed, there is growing consensus that...

This paper uses a structural VAR methodology to identify aggregate demand and supply shocks to real output for the South African economy. Demand shocks, in turn, are separated into fiscal and monetary shocks. The model is estimated with quarterly data over two overlapping samples: 1960Q2-2006Q4...