Keywords:
administrative data, inflation expectations, business surveys
Abstract
With the adoption of inflation targeting in South Africa in 2000, the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) began to collect inflation expectations survey data on behalf of the South African Reserve Bank. This respected survey is rich by international standards and has contributed valuable insights to policy, academic and private sector analyses. International trends towards greater reliance on microdata within macroeconomics are, however, placing slightly different demands on the survey, and access to complementary datasets has offered new opportunities to enhance it. In this pilot study, we link the inflation expectations survey data of firms to a spatial tax panel dataset. We investigate whether the survey sample adequately represents the structure of the South African economy and offer a series of survey weights to be added to the micro dataset. The results show that the BER has maintained an adequate level of representativity over the life of the survey, but we recommend that sample weights be estimated periodically to ensure that representativity is ensured institutionally. The sample weights can also support targeted recruitment in future. Finally, through careful documentation we hope to enable other researchers to pursue questions that benefit from linking the inflation expectations data with other datasets.
Author Biographies
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Dr. Monique Reid, South African Reserve Bank, Stellenbosch University
Monique Reid is a lead Economist in the Research Department of the South African Reserve Bank, where she leads research under the theme monetary policy efficiency and implementation. She is also an extraordinary associate professor in the Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, where she lectures a postgraduate course in monetary economics. She has also previously lectured postgraduate courses in macroeconomics at Stellenbosch University and monetary economics at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. As an NRF-rated researcher, Monique has published research on monetary policy in a range of academic journals.
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Professor Dieter von Fintel, Stellenbosch University, South African Reserve Bank
Dieter is a professor in the department of economics at Stellenbosch university. He is a research affiliate of the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn, and a research fellow of the Global Labor Organisation (GLO). He also holds a position as a research fellow at the South African Reserve Bank. Dieter has consulted to the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children Fund, the International Labor Organisation, and various national statistical offices on development and statistical issues. His research has focused on understanding impacts of historical and contemporary policies on wealth inequality, spatial inequality, local labour markets, food security and human development in sub-Saharan Africa. He is an applied micro-econometrician, who studies differences in development outcomes using survey, administrative and satellite data.
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Mr. Anis Foresto, South African Reserve Bank
Anis is a junior economist in the economic research department of the South African Reserve Bank.
Section
Working Paper Series
