The Role of Export Diversification on Economic Growth in South Africa

Fiscal Policy and Unemployment in South Africa: 1980 – 2010

Climate change is seen as a peril to the overall financial system, yet this revelation is in its infant stage. On that note, this study investigates the impact of climate change shocks on banking system resilience in selected Sub-Saharan economies. The study relies on a quantitative research method by first employing a Generalized Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) (1,1) model to forecast the volatility series of the climate change variables. Further, the study applies the panel ARDL model to disseminate the long- and short-term associations between the obtained conditional variances of climate change parameters and banking system resilience within a time frame of 1996-2017 for 29 selected economies. The results show that banking systems in SSA are resilient to temperature shocks in the long-term. However, the study finds that the banking systems in SSA are not resilient to both precipitation and greenhouse gas shocks in the long-term. For the short-term impact assessment, the study finds that banking systems in SSA are resilient to only precipitation shocks. The study concludes that banking sectors in SSA should vigorously conduct stress-testing on climate-related financial risks and also design forward-looking strategies as well as climate change risk management procedures in the wake of climate change events.

Previous studies generally find mixed empirical evidence on the relationship between government spending and economic growth. This study re-examine the relationship between government expenditure and economic growth in South Africa for the period of 1990 to 2015 using the Vector Error Correction Model and Granger Causality techniques. The time series data included in the model were gross domestic Product (GDP), government expenditure, national savings, government debt and consumer price index or inflation. Results obtained from the analysis showed a negative long-run relationship between government expenditure and economic growth in South Africa. Furthermore, the estimate of the speed of adjustment coefficient found in this study has revealed that 49 per cent of the variation in GDP from its equilibrium level is corrected within of a year. Furthermore, the study discovered that the causality relationship run from economic growth to government expenditure. This implied that the Wagner’s law is applicable to South Africa since government expenditure is an effect rather than a cause of economic growth. The results presented in this study are similar to those in the literature and are also sustained by preceding studies.

Local Economic Development entered the development lexicon in South Africa in the 1990s and from that time it has become not just an “isolated local development initiative” but an obligation for all local authorities according to a plethora of government policies and the South African Constitution of 1996. While this paper explicates the Local Economic Development episteme in South Africa, it also seeks to explore reasons for the demise of local economic development in South Africa. The paper is exploratory and descriptive in design and relied on extensive literature review. It argues that LED in South Africa suffers from both conceptual imprecision and theoretical underdevelopment. The assumption of a local economy underpinning LED is also questioned in an era of globalisation. Moreover, other challenges confronting the success of LED in the country highlighted entail lack of local government capacity for implementation, funding for LED, lack of effective planning methodologies and failure to manage participation at the local level. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p591