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Capital Controls, Two-Tiered Exchange Rate Systems And Exchange Rate Policy: The South African Experience

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  • Eric Schaling

Abstract

South Africa's 40 years of experience with capital controls on residents and non-residents (1961-2001) reads like a collection of examples of perverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation. We show that the presence of capital controls on residents and non-residents enabled the South African Reserve Bank to target domestic interest rates (and or the exchange rate) via interventions in the (commercial) foreign exchange market. This provides an early rationale for anchoring SA monetary policy via the exchange rate, rather than via domestic interest rates. This suggests not only that the capital controls themselves exhibited substantial institutional inertia, but that this same institutional inertia also applied to the monetary policy regime. A plausible reason for this is that for most of the 20th century in South Africa. (partial) capital controls and exchange rate based monetary policies were like Siamese twins - almost impossible to separate. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2009 Economic Society of South Africa.

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  • Eric Schaling, 2009. "Capital Controls, Two-Tiered Exchange Rate Systems And Exchange Rate Policy: The South African Experience," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(4), pages 505-530, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:77:y:2009:i:4:p:505-530
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Martin Grandes & Marcel Peter & Nicolas Pinaud, 2003. "The Currency Premium and Local-Currency Denominated Debt Costs in South Africa," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 230, OECD Publishing.
    2. Huizinga, H.P., 1996. "The Taxation Implicit in Two-Tiered Exchange Rate Systems," Discussion Paper 1996-100, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    3. Harry Huizinga, 1996. "The Taxation Implicit in Two-Tiered Exchange Rate Systems," IMF Working Papers 96/120, International Monetary Fund.
    4. R. M. Gidlow, 1976. "Exchange Control and the Blocked Rand Mechanism," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 44(1), pages 52-58, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Peter Aling & Shakill Hassan, 2012. "No-Arbitrage One-Factor Models Of The South African Term Structure Of Interest Rates," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 80(3), pages 301-318, September.

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