Business Cycles and Structural Change in South Africa

Willem Boshoff is an economist at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where he is an Associate Professor of Economics and the Director of the Centre for Competition Law and Economics. He teaches macroeconomics, time-series analysis and industrial organization. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Stellenbosch University and has published on South African business and financial cycles, cycles in collusion, and statistical applications to competition policy problems. Prof. Boshoff is editor of the Journal for Studies in Economics and Econometrics and is a National Research Foundation ‘rated’ researcher.

• Introduction.- Part I - Looking Back: What Do We Know About the South African Business Cycle?.- The South African Economy in the Twentieth Century.- Part II - The Financial Crisis and Its Impact on the Cycle: Business Cycle Recoveries - A Comparative View.- The Role of Institutional Structure in Mediating the Impact of the Financial Crisis on the South African Business Cycle.- Part III - Key Drivers of the South African Business Cycle: A History of South Africa's Modern Business Cycle.- On the Estimation and Application of Structural Decompositions of the South African Business Cycle.- Part IV - Predicting the South African Business Cycle: Business Confidence and the Business Cycle in South Africa.- Assessing the 2013 and 2017 Business Cycle Turning Points Signalled by the SARB's Composite Leading Business Cycle Indicator.- Conclusions.