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Journal of African Economies Advance Access originally published online on May 13, 2008
Journal of African Economies 2009 18(1):84-112; doi:10.1093/jae/ejn008
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© The author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Where Has All the Money Gone? Wealth and the Demand for Money in South Africa{dagger}

Stephen G. Halla,b,c, George Hondroyiannisb,d, P.A.V.B. Swamye and George S. Tavlasb,*

a Leicester University
b Bank of Greece
c NIESR
d Harokopio University
e U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

* Corresponding author: George S. Tavlas, Economics Research Department, Bank of Greece, 21, El. Venizelos Avenue, 102 50 Athens, Greece. Tel: + 30 210 320 2370; fax: + 30 210 320 2432; e-mail: gtavlas{at}bankofgreece.gr

After an upward trend for about 25 years, the income velocity of money in South Africa reversed its course in 1994 and began a steep decline that continues to the present day. Some writers have argued that the change in income velocity is symptomatic of an unstable demand for money. The implication of this argument being that movements in the money supply provide little useful information about medium-to-long-term inflationary developments. We argue otherwise. Our basic premise is that there is a stable demand-for-money function but that the models that have been used to estimate South African money demand are not well specified because they do not include a measure of wealth. Using two empirical methodologies—a co-integrated vector equilibrium correction approach and a time-varying coefficient approach—we find that a demand-for-money function that includes wealth is stable. Consequently, our results suggest that the present practice of the South African Reserve Bank whereby M3 is used as an information variable in the Bank's inflation-targeting framework is well placed.

JEL Classification: C01, C12, C32, E41

{dagger} This paper was written while George S. Tavlas was Visiting Research Fellow at the South African Reserve Bank. Helpful comments from seminar participants at the South African Reserve Bank, Michael Bleaney and two referees are gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of their respective institutions.


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