The effects of exchange rate volatility on South African investments

Abstract

This study analysed the short- and long-run interactions between the exchange rate and different types of investments in South Africa from 1970 to 2014. The study focussed on the portfolio theory, the life cycle of investment and the accelerator model of investment, which all found that investment plays an important part in the economic growth and development prospects of a country, thus a healthy investment environment needs to be present in order to attract investment inflows into the country. The conceptualisation of exchange rates focussed on the definitions and types of exchange rates that are in existence, as well as the theories of exchange rate determination which included the purchasing power parity, the interest rate parity, the portfolio balance approach and the Balassa-Samuelson model. These theories are all different but are essential for this study as assumptions made by these theories are relevant to the explanations of exchange rates. The Vector Autoregressive model (VAR), a multivariate Johansen co-integration approach and Granger causality test were conducted to analyse the interactions between the exchange rate and different types of investments. The short-run analysis found that there was a short-run relationship between the exchange rate and different types of investments in South Africa. However, this short-run interaction were found to be small, thus, not significant enough to cause disruptions to the exchange rate and to the inflow of investments into the country. The long-run analysis found that a there was a long-run relationship between the exchange rate and different types of investments in South Africa. This long-run relationship was also found to be negative. This study concluded that investments have a negative, long-run effect on the exchange rate, suggesting that a fall in the investments would cause an increase in the exchange rate in the long-run.