 South Africa’s Exports Performance: Any Role for Structural Factors?Rahul Anand, Roberto Perrelli and Boyang Zhang No 2016/024, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund Abstract: Despite a substantial and prolonged exchange rate depreciation, South Africa’s export performance has disappointed since the global financial crisis. In this paper we focus on the role of structural factors in reducing the responsiveness of South African exports to the real exchange rate depreciation. To this end, we construct a unique database of export performance at the firm level. Our analysis suggests that electricity bottlenecks, limited product market competition, and labor market constraints have reduced the responsiveness of firms’ exports to the rand depreciation. On the other hand, a firm’s ability to diversify its exports has helped it benefit more from currency movements. Keywords: WP; firm; panel data; Export performance; current account; structural bottlenecks; South Africa; production function; firm size; export sales; export market concentration; export firm; Exports; Real effective exchange rates; Depreciation; Electricity; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2016/024 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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