The South African Phillips Curve: How Applicable Is the Gordon Model?

Abstract

Is there a Phillips curve relationship present in South Africa and if so, what form does it take? Traditionally the method to establish whether or not there is a relationship between the output gap and the change in inflation is merely to regress the latter on the former. This yields the well-known augmented Phillips curve. However, Gordon has argued that this specification of the Phillips curve produces biased results. Instead, he puts forward and estimates successfully for several industrialised countries his so-called triangular model that tests for hysteresis and inertia in the behaviour of inflation, as well as the impact on inflation of changes in the output level. This paper considers whether or not Gordon's triangle model is applicable to South Africa, i.e. are hysteresis and inertia present in South Africa? In addition, in an attempt to find a better estimation of the output gap, the paper also experiments with alternative ways to estimate the long-run output level, including the standard HP-filter, as well as a production function approach. Copyright (c) 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2006 Economic Society of South Africa.

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