This paper investigates the dynamic causal relationship between energy consumption, human capital investment and economic growth in South Africa for the period 1960–2015 within the vector error correction model (VECM) framework. It was revealed that there is cointegration among the variables. The causality test result reveals that there exists a long‐run bi‐directional relationship between economic growth and energy consumption. While on the other hand, a long‐run unidirectional causal relationship was discovered running from economic growth and energy consumption to social and economic infrastructure investment. This justifies the government's massive investment in the energy sector which is aimed at meeting the increasing energy demand. However, the lack of feedback from social infrastructural investment may imply that the focus social infrastructure investment is not adequate to granger cause growth or due to high inequality and unemployment in the country which will require more investment attention for it to significantly affect growth. The government, therefore, should give priority to the provision of both social and economic infrastructure investment and implementation of policies that are aimed at human capital development through public empowerment so that they can support the economy instead of depending on the government.

The importance of a sound and stable financial system and by extension economic stability was brought to the fore by the global financial crisis (GFC). The economic and social costs of the GFC have renewed the commitment of stakeholders in the financial sector including central banks to develop instruments and methodologies that will be useful in monitoring financial stress within the financial system and the real economy. This study contributes to the growing literature by developing a financial stress indicator for the South African financial market. The financial stress indicator (FSI) is a single aggregate indicator that is constructed to reflect the systemic nature of financial instability and also to measure the vulnerability of the financial system to both internal and external shocks. Using the principal component analysis (PCA), the results show that financial stress can be identified by the financial stress indicator. Furthermore, using a recursive Vector Autoregression (VAR) model to estimate the impact of financial stress on output and investment, the result shows that financial stress has a negative impact on economic growth and investment, though not immediately. FSI is very useful for gauging the effectiveness of government measures to mitigate the impact of financial stress. Concerted effort to stimulate investment and domestic production by relevant stakeholders is necessary to mitigate the impact of financial stress. This will go a long way to alleviating the impact of the financial stress on industrial production, employment and the economy at large.

The global increase in the regulation of banks has encouraged the channeling of investment funds into less regulated institutions such as shadow banks to avoid restriction. Shadow banks are institutions that operate outside the regulatory framework of the traditional banking system and because of that, they lack adequate safety compared to the traditional banks. These among others have raised serious concerns, especially after the recent financial crisis as they see these institutions as a major source of risk and instability in the financial system and the economy as a whole. This study examined the link between shadow banking and financial stability in South African by employing a modest desktop literature review approach. Although the shadow banking in South Africa is advantageous in terms providing alternative source of credit to support economic activities by extending banking services and investment opportunities to the unbanked as well as those who lack knowledge of how to access capital, however, issues of regulations, management and transparency have not been adequately dealt with. These create a great risk to the economy if not properly addressed. Protecting the interest and investment of customers should be a major concern of government or regulatory ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The quest to get many people into higher education often crowds out the need for quality teaching and learning achievement if not backed up by resources. Narratives of recurrent concerns in the higher education sector include maintaining access to and quality of higher education, achieving a better outcome and reduce the number of students dropping out of institution. Although successes have been achieved in terms of student access to higher education, the same cannot be said of success rate. What is the weak link? How can the misalignment in the educational sector be remedied? Using ordinary least square (OLS) estimation method, empirical analysis revealed that student success depends to a large extent on the quality of input. It was evident from the study that the quantity and quality of research output significantly depend on the quality of academic staff. In view of these, various quality-enhancing investments in facilities and teacher upgrading are needed. More experienced lecturers irrespective of their nationality need to be employed to continually support teaching and learning. The higher education sector needs to ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The study assessed the effect of inflation targeting (IT) policy on inflation uncertainty and economic growth in African and European IT countries. This study contributes to the existing knowledge by analysing and comparing the African IT and European IT countries using two advanced approaches which include the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR). To determine how the IT policy affects the inflation uncertainty in selected countries, time series techniques were employed. Panel data approaches were used to determine the effect of inflation targeting on economic growth in the selected countries. The results are as follows: (1) Inflation Targeting policy is insignificant in reducing inflation uncertainty in South Africa, and the effect of the policy in Ghana is inconclusive; (2) The IT policy has a significant impact in reducing inflation uncertainty in European countries (i.e., Poland and the Czech Republic); (3) Inflation targeting has a negative impact on economic growth in African Countries; (4) The policy has a positive impact on economic growth in European Countries; (5) In comparison to European countries, the strategy has a negligible impact on economic growth in Africa. Overall, the results suggest that European countries inflation targeting regimes are more credible in terms of reducing the level of inflation uncertainty and sustaining economic growth compared to African countries. In this respect, policymakers must ensure that they assess the economic condition of an individual country before implementing such a policy.