M.Com. (Economics) / This study looked into the possible presence of structural inflation in South Africa. The South African rate of inflation has, by the time this study was undertaken, showed resistance to reduce in the face of several years of demand management policies. It was this resistance that led to the idea that the South African inflation rate might be the result of several structural factors in the economy. The study was done in three separate stages. In the first, a study of the conventional theories of inflation, the demand-pull and cost push theories, was done. The main objective was to establish whether inflation could be controlled by the medicine these theories prescribed. In section two, the different schools of thought as regards the structural approach to inflation were analyzed. The structuralist school, developed during the late 1950s, described inflation as the result of productivity discrepancies mainly between the agricultural and industrial sectors. The structural school, which developed during the early 1970s has two variations. The first, the Scandinavian variant, ascribes inflation to the existing productivity gap between the international competing sectors and the domestic sectors, whilst no corresponding gap in salaries between the relevant sectors exists. The second variant designates inflation to the gap existing between the labour productivity in the public and private sectors. Here again, no such salary gap exists between the sectors. The last structural inflation school of thought discussed was the one prevailing in the USA. This school saw inflation as the result of the unproductive use of capital and labour when measured against the incomes generated by the same factors of production. In section three of the study, the abovementioned theories of structural inflation were empirically applied in the South African context. In all cases very definite pointers, indicating the applicability ·of these theories in the South African situation were found. In all cases two main sector groups were constructed; each consisted as the sum of the weighted productivity of wages of the sectors belonging to that sector group i.e. internationally or domestically competitive and public or private competing groups. The constructed series for labour productivity and wages and salaries for the different sector groups were then compared.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:11333 |
| Date | 02 June 2014 |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Johannesburg |
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