The Growth Effects of Financial Development Over Economic Cycle in South Africa

Abstract

This study examines the effects of financial development, proxied by domestic credit, on growth for South Africa across the states of the economy over the sample period 1970Q1-2019Q3. To address this point, the authors use Jorda's local projection method to generate impulse response functions for this small developing open economy. The shocks, however, are identified by applying short-run contemporaneous restrictions in a vector autoregressive model based on Cholesky identification scheme. The states of the economy are determined by a threshold variable, namely output growth. The results indicate that one standard deviation shock in domestic credit leads to a significant increment in output in this economy. This effect, though, is a bit pronounced in recession than the expansion state. One standard deviation shock in domestic credit leads to around 0.8 and 0.5% increment in output in recession and expansion states at the fourth quarter and on impact, respectively. The results are also robust to an alternative proxy variable of financial development.