The Impact of Economic Institutions as a Fundamental Factor of Economic Growth in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is a country that is open to trade, and this makes the study significant as economic institutions work better in such countries. The underperformance of South Africa's economy stems from the difficulties in achieving institutional change where state-owned companies such as Sasol benefit the most in the oil, gas and chemical industries. This is because SoEs are the main suppliers of natural gas sourced from Mozambique. This implies that Sasol’s customers are the price takers, meaning that whatever the price of gas set by Sasol, it will be difficult for Sasol’s customers to oppose it since there is no competition within the market. Entrepreneurs in developing countries with poor economic institutions struggle to grow their businesses due to property insecurity, barriers to market entry, and biased contract offering. The study employed the ARDL to determine the long-run relationship between economic institutions and economic growth, whilst the pairwise Granger causality test was used to determine the direction of the established cointegration. The study used annual time series data for the variables included in the model sourced from World Development Indicators (WDI), the global economy, and Transparency International for the period 1995 to 2020. The estimated ARDL model included the following variables; Gross Domestic Product Per Capita (GDPPC), Property Rights Index (PRI), Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Government Expenditure Per Capita (GOVEXPP), and Trade openness (TO). The study’s findings indicate that PRI as a proxy of economic institutions promotes economic growth in South Africa. The results further show that all other variables also promote growth except CPI. The pairwise Granger Causality test indicates that there is a direct causality between economic institutions and economic growth. The economic policy implication in this regard is that South Africa's government should invest the majority of its public expenditure on human capital to improve the skills of unemployed youth, potentially increasing their employability. Consequently, better economic institutions could be implemented or created.