Personal and corporate saving in South Africa
Abstract
Low domestic saving rates in South Africa may perpetuate a low-growth trap. The decline in government saving, a major reason for the overall decline in saving, is now being reversed. However, personal saving rates have fallen since 1993, and corporate rates since 1995, and both may decline further with lower real interest rates. It is important to understand both personal and corporate saving behaviour in order to formulate policies to raise the domestic saving rate in line with the needs of economic growth. This article summarizes our previous work on the household sector, emphasizing the role of financial liberalization, assets, and income expectations, and it explains sectoral links and policy implications. Further, it analyses South Africa's corporate saving rate in detail. Models are developed both for the share of profits in national income, including the roles of the terms of trade, tax effects, and the price to unit labour cost margin, and for the share of corporate saving in profits, which is found to depend on inflation, the real interest rate, dividend taxation, and financial liberalization. Corporate saving is remarkably underresearched, given its importance in many economies. This research thus puts the saving and growth concerns of Kaldor into a modern empirical context.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
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Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford in its series CSAE Working Paper Series with number 2000-21.Length:
Date of creation: 2000
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published in The World Bank Economic Review, 14 (3), 2000, 509-544
Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2000-21
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Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Janine Aron & John Muellbauer, 2000. "Personal and Corporate Saving in South Africa," World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 14(3), pages 509-544, September.
- Aron, Janine & Muellbauer, John, 2000. "Personal and Corporate Saving in South Africa," CEPR Discussion Papers 2656, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
- E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
- E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
- G35 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Payout Policy
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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