South Africa's inflation: Monetary or fiscal

Working paper 928

Abstract

Conventional macroeconomics has viewed inflation as a monetary phenomenon through the Quantity Theory of Money. Ever-increasing sovereign debt globally has caused concern among economists. These concerns follow not from the ability of governments to repay their debt, but rather from the impact of sizeable debt portfolios on price levels. The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level epitomizes these concerns, contrasting the traditional view on inflation by arguing that it is a fiscal phenomenon caused by debt issuance without real backing. This study uses this fiscal inflation theory to analyse South Africa's inflation  through a fiscal-monetary VAR model, finding that South Africa's inflation dynamics are accurately described by both monetary and fiscal factors, but more so by the latter.