Financial liberalization in South Africa was a process that took the form of various legal reforms very a long period of time. This study uses quarterly financial data from 1969 quarter one to 2009 quarter four to analyse this process. The data used was pertinent to the financial liberalization theorem by McKinnon (1973) and Shaw (1973). The examination of the relationships between the various macro economic variables has important implications for effective policy formulation. The empirical analysis is carried out in four phases: the preliminary analysis, the principal component analysis (PCA), the cointegration analysis and pair wise Granger causality tests. The preliminary analysis examines trends over the sample period and reports the on the correlation between the selected variables. The PCA analysis was used to create indexes for financial liberalization, taking into account the phase wise nature of legal reforms. The generated index was representative of the process of financial liberalization from 1969 to 2009. A financial development index was also created using the various traditional measures of financial development and through PCA which investigated interrelationships among the variables according to their common sources of movement. Cointegration analysis is carried out using the Johansen cointegration procedure which investigates whether there is long-run comovement between South African economic growth and the selected macroeconomic variables. Where cointegration is found, Vector Error-Correction Models (VECMs) are estimated in order to examine the short-run adjustments. For robustness, many control variables were added into the model. The results showed that there are positive long run relationships between economic growth and financial liberalization, financial development and a negative relationship with interest rates. The Granger results suggested that the MS hypothesis does not manifest accurately in the South African data. The implications of the results were that financial liberalization has had positive effects on economic growth and thus any impediments to full financial liberalization must be removed albeit with considerations towards employment and local productivity. Financial development also possessed positive long run relationships with economic growth, although results differed based on the financial development proxy used. Thus, financial development must be improved primarily through liberalizing the banking sector and spurring savings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:1048 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Savanhu, Tatenda |
| Publisher | Rhodes University, Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MCom |
| Format | 106 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Savanhu, Tatenda |
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