Title: Examining asymmetric effects in the South African Phillips curve: evidence from logistic smooth transition regression models

Authors: Andrew Phiri

Addresses: School of Economics, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, North West University, South Africa

Abstract: This study contributes to the foregoing literature by investigating asymmetric behaviour within the South African short-run Phillips curve for three versions of the Phillips curve specification namely; the New Classical Phillips curve, the new Keynesian Phillips curve and the hybrid new Keynesian Phillips curve. To this end, we employ a logistic smooth transition regression (LSTR) econometric model to each of the aforementioned versions of the Phillips curve specifications for quarterly data spanning from 1970:01 to 2014:01 and thus endeavour into determining which version of the Phillips curve best suites the employed data. Our empirical results indicate that both the marginal-cost-based as well as the output gap-based versions of the hybrid new Keynesian Philips curve provide a good fit for South African data. Therefore, our empirical results indicate that monetary policy in South Africa has an influence on the demand side of the economy through inflation inertia and inflation expectations whilst appearing to exhibit no significant effects on the supply side of the economy.

Keywords: Phillips curve; smooth transition regression; monetary policy; South Africa; asymmetric effects; regression models; econometrics; inflation inertia; inflation expectations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSE.2016.073683

International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 2016 Vol.8 No.1, pp.18 - 42

Received: 25 Mar 2015
Accepted: 28 Jul 2015
Published online: 15 Dec 2015 *

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