Capital Accumulation and Macro Policy in South Africa: Political Instability, Distributive Conflict, and Economic Institutions

James Heintz

Working Papers from Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Abstract: This paper explores the institutional factors behind the crisis of capital accumulation in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of its focus on institutional stability, the paper contributes to the literature on the existence of an apartheid social structure of accumulation in which economic and political institutions are important determinants of investment. Investment function estimates show that political instability accounted for most of the fall in the rate of accumulation, independent of distributive outcomes, such as the level of profitability. Based on these findings, the paper argues that tensions between political stability, democratic reforms, and distributive outcomes prompted the adoption of market-oriented macroeconomic policies in the post-apartheid era that have so far failed to move the economy away from the low rates of accumulation characteristic of recent decades.

Keywords: investment; South Africa; political instability; social structure of accumulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://per.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/WP29.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to per.umass.edu:443 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uma:periwp:wp29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Judy Fogg ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).