This paper examines Keynes's thoughts on the economic causes of war. Though an issue upon which the classical economists and their popularisers wrote much, the links between economics and war has become, beyond an unthinking acceptance of the pacific qualities of free trade, an issue largely...

This paper tells you everything you need to know in order to impress your friends with your knowledge of the most famous people and the useful past of the subject of economics. However, it is recommended that this paper should not be read in the company of anyone who reads dusty old books, and...

In this paper I look in some detail at one specific aspect of macro distribution theories, namely Keynes's Macro theory of profits.

This study assesses debt sustainability in South Africa allowing for possible nonlinearities in the form of threshold behaviour by fiscal authorities. A long historical data series on the debt-to-GDP ratio and models with fixed and time-varying thresholds allowing the level of debt to vary...

We present a model in which a conservative incumbent with preferences for low public spending can strategically run a budget deficit to prevent the left-wing opposition candidate from choosing high public spending if elected, and possibly also to ensure his own reelection. We find that the...

This paper examines data on Australian fiscal policy going back to federation to answer two question. First, has the conduct of Australian fiscal policy been consistent with the government's intertemporal budget constraint? Second, have there been major structural changes in the conduct of...

Measures of core inflation convey critical information about an economy. They have a direct effect on the policy-making process, particularly in inflation-targeting countries, and are utilized in forecasting and modelling exercises. In South a Africa the prices indices on which inflation is...

This paper develops a new index of economic uncertainty for South Africa for the period 1990-2014 and analyses the macroeconomic impact of changes in this measure. The index is constructed from three sources: (1) Disagreement among professional forecasters about macroeconomic conditions using...

This paper constructs a number of possible core measures of annual inflation using Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). Annual inflation is decomposed into its trend, oscillating and noise components in order to develop an understanding of the trend and cyclicality in South African headline...

In this paper we investigate the role of financial development, or more wide-spread access to finance, in generating economic growth in four Latin American countries between 1980 and 2007. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, con.rm the Schumpeterian prediction which...