Dr. Rashad Cassim: Unanswered questions in South African monetary policy

On Monday, Dr. Rashad Cassim (picture above, second from left, along with Prof Ben Smit, Dr Monique Reid and Prof Stan du Plessis), who is the Head of Research at the South African Reserve Bank and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, visited the Department and delivered a wide-ranging and insightful talk on opportunities for mutual improved understanding between monetary policy practitioners and academic researchers. His presentation began by sketching out his view on the role of inflation targeting in South Africa and other countries, namely that it is more a way of communication than a specific policy theory, and it works by providing a nominal anchor that guides the theoretical framework on which decisions are made. He identified many areas where our understanding of monetary policy could be improved, such as the impact of financial regulation on the monetary transmission mechanism and the apparent flattening of the Phillips curve.