The article reports on the interactions and possibility of coordination between macroprudential and monetary policies in South Africa, based on business and financial cycles synchronisation. To this end, relying on financial and economic time series indicators spanning the period 2000M01–2018M12, a two-step Markov switching dynamic factor model was adopted for the measurement of composite indices, while both the dynamic conditional correlations and asymmetric generalised dynamic conditional correlations models were adopted for synchronisation analysis, together with the Metcalfe scale of coordination. The empirical evidence obtained is such that, under conditions of financial and real economic stress in South Africa, when there is crisis management rather than crisis prevention, macroprudential policy and monetary policy decisions are complementary. Therefore, there will be limited/no need for coordination between the two policy decisions. However, under normal times when there is crisis prevention rather than management, macroprudential policy and monetary policy decisions are noncomplementary; hence, the greatest degree of coordination is warranted, even though it might not be easy. Therefore, we conclude that it is possible to the coordinate the conduct of macroprudential, and monetary policies based on the synchronicity of business and financial cycles.

We analyse the impact of exchange rate misalignment on economic growth for a sample of emerging economies from 1970 to 2014 using a panel smooth transition regression vector error correction model. Besides, we provide a granger causality test conducted in a non-linear framework. We find that a rise in misalignment increases significantly the output in the short-run when currencies are close to equilibrium. When they are highly misaligned, the impact on growth is reduced. However, no significant impact of output on misalignment was found in the short-run. We provide evidence that misalignment granger causes the output at any given level of misalignment both in the short and long-run. Weaker granger causality was found between output and misalignment. This raises some important policy implications. Although emerging economies can use undervaluation as a growth strategy, the benefits are smaller when currencies are highly undervalued. There is, therefore, an incentive to keep exchange rates closer to their equilibrium.

Persistent energy consumption issues are ascribed to the failure of energy planners to understand the various macroeconomic factors that influence energy consumption. Therefore, we investigated the factors influencing energy consumption in six net African oil-exporting countries (AOECs) between 1980 and 2018. Our contribution to the literature is the use of estimators; cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) and cross-sectional distributed lag (CS-DL) modelling approaches, which take into account the time dynamics, the heterogeneity of different countries and cross-sectional dependence, to explore the relationship between energy consumption and its major determinants, such as openness, economic structure and per capita income. The results revealed that per capita income did not impact significantly on energy consumption in AOECs during the period under study, while trade openness had a positive and significant effect on it. The third variable of interest, namely economic structure, had a negative and significant effect on energy consumption. These results led to various recommendation for policymakers and future research in the concluding section.

This paper investigates the relationship between mineral resource endowment and economic growth in the Southern African economies - using a panel dataset of 14 countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) from 1990 to 2014. The empirical methodology involved the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalised method of moments (GMM) as the estimation techniques. The economic growth model was analysed based on a modified framework from Mahonye and Mandishara (2015). The findings are that real growth in services, real growth of manufacturing, real growth of agriculture, real growth of mining, human capital development, infrastructural development, trade openness, and growth in foreign direct investment, were all important determinants of economic growth in Southern African economies during the study period. Therefore, Southern African countries with natural resources should encourage their development and not be concerned about the threat of 'resource curse'.

Despite the large body of work that exists on the impact of exchange rate undervaluation on economic growth, only a mere literature focuses on the potential transmission mechanisms. There are authors who consider the size of the tradable sector as the operative channel through which undervaluation impacts economic growth. This is due to poor contracting environment and market failures that are prominent in the tradable sector as bad institutions “tax” tradables more than non-tradables. We look at this issue in this article for a set of emerging economies using annual data from 1970 to 2014. We find that the size of the tradable sector is indeed the operative channel through which undervaluation impacts growth. We have ruled out that bad institutions “tax” tradables more than non-tradables. Our results, robust to different undervaluation indexes, highlight instead the importance of total factor productivity surge induced by an undervaluation in increasing growth.