In our recent Codera Policy Paper, we show that productivity growth in South Africa has slowed since the global financial crisis and fallen further since the pandemic. TFP growth averaged 1 percent between 2000 and 2007Q4, -0.75 percent between 2010Q1 and 2020Q1, and declined further for much of the post-pandemic period under a Cobb-Douglas specification, but is even lower under a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) specification for most of these subsamples.
