Working Paper 113 - Monetary Policy Conduct Based on Nonlinear Taylor Rule: Evidence from South Africa

This paper analyses the applicability of a nonlinear Taylor rule in characterizing the monetary policy behavior of the South African Reserve Bank, using a logistic smooth transition regression approach. Using quarterly data from 1976 to 2008 to analyze the movement of the nominal short term interest rate for the South African Reserve Bank, we find that a nonlinear Taylor rule holds. On the contrary, some studies find that the South African Reserve Bank behavior can be described by a linear Taylor rule, but only because these studies removed the structural break which coincided with the Asian crises and estimated two different Taylor rules. Our study does not remove the structural break as it is an anomaly path, thus it uses the entire sampling period. Our results go counter to the above mentioned findings. In fact, our results are consistent with the international findings on the European Central Bank and the Bank of England that the nonlinear Taylor rule holds.