Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth in South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Many papers have been dealing with the problem of ARDL models and the same country (e.g. Ahmad, M., Khattak, S. I., Khan, S., & Rahman, Z. U. (2020). Do aggregate domestic consumption spending & technological innovation affect industrialization in South Africa? An application of linear & non-linear ARDL models. Journal of Applied Economics, 23(1), 44-65.; Nuru, N. Y., & Gereziher, H. Y. (2021). The effect of fiscal policy on economic growth in South Africa: a nonlinear ARDL model analysis. Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences.; Odhiambo, N. M. (2010). Finance-investment-growth nexus in South Africa: an ARDL-bounds testing procedure. Economic Change and Restructuring, 43(3), 205-219, and many more). So, I think the originality/novelty is not too high unless the authors add exact info about the originality/novelty.
 Besides that, I think a bit of critical review on fiscal policy will be a nice add-on. And what's more, information on how monetary and fiscal matters are combined.
 What about new trends in finance and monetary policy like quantitative easing, and how does this impact fiscal policy?
 Line 239 - too many additional space/spaces?
 ARDL model description is based on Pesaran and Pesaran (1997), I think a bit deeper and wider model description would be a plus.
Appendix A should be on a sepearate page (p. 530)

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article under evaluation can be considered as generally well written research study in the field of economics.

The strong sides:

Good writing skills.

Reasonable literature review.

Good and current topic.

Good construction of the article – though the discussion must be added.

 

Weaknesses:

The abstract. The problem and the aim of the research should be specified.

Introduction. Motivation is weak. Authors could better define the aim of the paper. Moreover, they could better point out the existing gap in the literature. Structure of the article is missing. Include research questions and hypotheses.

The theoretical value of the research should be clearly outlined. What are the novel and unique contributions to the related literature? 

What are the practical implications of the research results?

Research limitations should be extended.

There is not any real discussion of the obtained results were the current results are compared to previous studies by other authors.

Enhance the conclusion section in line with the research questions.

Include more limitations and future research directions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper intends to explore the effect of fiscal policy instruments on economic growth in South Africa for the period from 1988 to 2018, using the ARDL model. Therefore, the authors used economic growth (GDP RATE) as a dependent variable and fiscal policy instruments as independent variables. The authors’ findings revealed that there is a positive relationship between fiscal policy instruments (public sector expenditure, public consumption spending and taxation) and economic growth.

The following are some suggestions for improvement:

·       * The paragraph situated at the end of Section 2 Literature review  “The paper is divided into four major sections. Following the introduction, section 2 focuses on methodology and results are interpreted in section 3. Section 4 concludes the study, as it provides policy recommendations and highlights some limitations encountered in the study” is somewhat contradictory, perhaps this paragraph should be moved to the end of first section – Introduction, and the sections renumbered. The third section – Methodology is also numbered 2 same as Section 2 Literature review.

·       * The results are clearly presented. But these results need a more detailed discussion. Discussion of results needs more comparison with prior studies. How are these results similar to or different from what has been done before in related papers? This will help highlight any unique findings  and the gap filled by this paper.

 

Good luck with your paper!

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion the changes done by authors make this paper much better and thus this paper can be accepted.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article can be accepted in its present form.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have responded adequately to my comments. I recommend the acceptance of the paper.