This paper analyses the persistence of inflation in South Africa since 1981. A measure of the persistence of inflation provides important information about the impact of shocks on the economy over time. This information can be extremely useful for the purpose of setting monetary policy, especially in a small, open economy like South Africa. In addition, an estimate of persistence at the disaggregate level helps in the identification of the main drivers of aggregate inflation. This information is useful in deriving a core measure of South African inflation, which outperforms some of the more readily available core measures in identifying the underlying inflationary pressures in the economy. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2009 Economic Society of South Africa.

This paper analyses the trends in food price movements in South Africa between 1980 and 2008. There are three main results emanating from the analysis in this paper. Firstly, food price movements have played a large role in generating inflationary episodes in South Africa. Secondly, while external influences do matter, South African food price movements are mainly due to domestic influences. This implies that national policy has an important role to play in taming domestic food price inflation. Thirdly, given the strong second round impacts, food price movements warrant special attention in monetary policymaking. Core measures of inflation that exclude food price movements may not accurately reflect the underlying inflationary pressures in the economy and could compromise the attainment of the goal of price stability. JEL Classification: E310, E320, E370

Economic policy has always accorded an important role to export production in the overall growth process in South Africa. Recent policy proposals once again reaffirm this commitment. This paper attempts to ascertain whether the emphasis on export production is justified. Using modern econometric techniques within a multivariate framework, the results show that there is uni-directional Granger-causality running from exports to economic growth in South Africa. In addition, the gross domestic product (GDP) accounting identity underestimates the contribution of exports to economic growth. Thus, deliberate policy measures that stimulate export production will greatly enhance the growth prospects for the South African economy. The results in this paper also indicate that more attention should be given to the promotion of non-primary exports. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper constructs and analyses the properties of a trimmed mean inflation rate for South Africa. Based on an analysis of the distributions of the consumer price index component price changes, a measure is constructed that provides an estimator of core inflation, which may be particularly useful to policymakers in an inflation-targeting environment. The trimmed mean estimator focuses on the price movements of individual components that have a strong bearing on the current and future trend of the headline inflation rate, allowing monetary policy to be directed at the persistent or underlying sources of inflationary pressures. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 Economic Society of South Africa.