Infrastructure and Growth in South Africa: Direct and Indirect Productivity Impacts of 19 Infrastructure Measures

Summary Empirical explorations of the growth and aggregate productivity impacts of infrastructure have been characterized by ambiguous (countervailing signs) results with little robustness. This paper, utilizing panel data for South African manufacturing over the 1970-2000 period, and a range of 19 infrastructure measures, explores the question of infrastructure endogeneity in output equations. The paper develops an instrumentation strategy generalizable to other contexts. Controlling for the possibility of endogeneity in the infrastructure measures renders the impact of infrastructure capital not only positive, but of economically meaningful magnitudes.growth productivity infrastructure Africa South Africa

Georgia's economic collapse, 1991-1994: the role of state orders and inflation

In the Republic of Georgia, hyperinflation interacted with the state order system to create a self-perpetuating cycle and an almost total collapse of the economy. Breaking this “vicious cycle” required a number of simultaneous reforms in price, trade, and tax policy, which would not have worked as well had they been undertaken piecemeal. This history argues in favor of a “big bang” approach to reform in transition economies.Transition, hyperinflation, trade policy, export controls, state orders,

Currency areas in theory and practice

The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.comThe dominant theoretical framework for analysing currency domains, optimum currency area (OCA) theory, has a miserable record in explaining actual currency area formation, expansion or dissolution. Ministates use foreign currencies to avoid high transactions costs; otherwise countries want control over their monetary policy. Nations do not tolerate multiple currencies, because they complicate public revenue and expenditure decisions. These arguments regarding control of monetary policy and content of fiscal policy differ from the OCA theory's emphasis on a trade-off between the microeconomic transactions costs benefits of a wider currency area and the macroeconomic policy benefits of a narrower currency area.Richard Pomfre