IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/sajeco/v76y2008i3p335-355.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Changing Volatility Of The South African Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Burger

Abstract

During the last decade economic literature explored the presence of and reasons for what became known as “the great moderation” in the US and other G7 countries. “The great moderation” describes the decrease in economic volatility experienced in many of the G7 countries. This paper finds that in South Africa volatility is also not constant (it even finds that there are autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic effects present) and that volatility also decreased, particularly since 1994. Following the literature, the paper explores several reasons for this decrease and finds that smaller shocks, better monetary policy and improvements in the financial sector that place less liquidity constraints on individuals and allow them to manage their debt better are some of the main reasons for the reduction in the volatility of the South African economy. The literature on the G7 also suggests that better inventory management contributed to the lower volatility. However, this seems not to be true for South Africa.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Burger, 2008. "The Changing Volatility Of The South African Economy," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 76(3), pages 335-355, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:76:y:2008:i:3:p:335-355
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1813-6982.2008.00198.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2008.00198.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2008.00198.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barell, Ray & Gottschalk, Sylvia, 2004. "The Volatility of the Output Gap in the G7," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 188, pages 100-107, April.
    2. John B. Taylor, 1999. "A Historical Analysis of Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 319-348, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Robert J Gordon, 2005. "What Caused the Decline in US Business Cycle Volatility?," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Christopher Kent & David Norman (ed.),The Changing Nature of the Business Cycle, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    4. Margaret M. McConnell & Gabriel Perez-Quiros, 2000. "Output fluctuations in the United States: what has changed since the early 1980s?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
    5. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2005. "Understanding Changes In International Business Cycle Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(5), pages 968-1006, September.
    6. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, October.
    7. Brian M. Doyle & Jon Faust, 2002. "An investigation of co-movements among the growth rates of the G-7 countries," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 88(Oct), pages 427-437, October.
    8. Christina D. Romer, 1999. "Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 23-44, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goodness C. Aye & Mehmet Balcilar & Rangan Gupta, 2020. "The Effectiveness Of Monetary Policy In South Africa Under Inflation Targeting: Evidence from a Time-Varying Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive Model," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 54(4), pages 55-73, October-D.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. William Martin & Robert Rowthorn, 2004. "Will Stability Last?," CESifo Working Paper Series 1324, CESifo.
    2. Luca Gambetti & Jordi Galí, 2009. "On the Sources of the Great Moderation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 26-57, January.
    3. Nason James M. & Smith Gregor W, 2008. "Great Moderation(s) and US Interest Rates: Unconditional Evidence," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-33, November.
    4. Nathan Perry & Nathaniel Cline, 2016. "What caused the great inflation moderation in the US? A post-Keynesian view," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 4(4), pages 475-502, October.
    5. Anna Batyra, 2007. "Are turbulences of Sargent and Ljungqvist consistent with lower aggregate volatility?," 2007 Meeting Papers 413, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Has the business cycle changed?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 9-56.
    7. Necati Tekatli, 2007. "Understanding Sources of the Change in International Business Cycles," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 731.08, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    8. Biscarri, Javier Gómez & Moreno, Antonio & Gracia, Fernando Pérez de, 2010. "Money demand accommodation: Impact on macro-dynamics and policy consequences," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 138-154, January.
    9. Dynan, Karen E. & Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Sichel, Daniel E., 2006. "Can financial innovation help to explain the reduced volatility of economic activity?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 123-150, January.
    10. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Has the Business Cycle Changed? Evidence and Explanations," Working Papers 2003-2, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    11. Hasan Engin Duran, 2019. "Structural change and output volatility reduction in OECD countries: evidence of the Second Great Moderation," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, December.
    12. Douglas Sutherland & Peter Hoeller & Balázs Égert & Oliver Röhn, 2010. "Counter-cyclical Economic Policy," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 760, OECD Publishing.
    13. Jinho Bae & Chang-Jin Kim & Dong Kim, 2012. "The evolution of the monetary policy regimes in the U.S," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 617-649, October.
    14. Oleg Korenok & Stanislav Radchenko, 2004. "Monetary Policy Effect on the Business Cycle Fluctuations: Output vs. Index Measures of the Cycle," Macroeconomics 0409015, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Sep 2004.
    15. Mandler, Martin, 2009. "In search of robust monetary policy rules - Should the Fed look at money growth or stock market performance?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 345-361, June.
    16. Magnus Reif, 2020. "Macroeconomics, Nonlinearities, and the Business Cycle," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 87, May.
    17. Florin O. Bilbiie & Roland Straub, 2013. "Asset Market Participation, Monetary Policy Rules, and the Great Inflation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 377-392, May.
    18. William A. Branch & John Carlson & George W. Evans & Bruce McGough, 2009. "Monetary Policy, Endogenous Inattention and the Volatility Trade‐off," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 123-157, January.
    19. Paul Ho & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte & Felipe Schwartzman, 2022. "Multilateral Comovement in a New Keynesian World: A Little Trade Goes a Long Way," Working Paper 22-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    20. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2011. "Monetary Policy, Trend Inflation, and the Great Moderation: An Alternative Interpretation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 341-370, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:76:y:2008:i:3:p:335-355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.