This paper considers the extent to which South African households have deleveraged, since the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. We extend the official South African Reserve Bank business cycle methodology to date financial cycles, from which we identify the peaks and troughs of the South African financial cycle going back to 1966. Our composite financial cycle index peaks in April 1974, January 1984 and May 2007; it has bottomed out in July 1979 and February 1999. Thus, we still await the trough. We further compare and contrast the deleveraging process in the current downward phase to the experiences from previous financial cycles. We find that the average period of the financial cycle in South Africa is much longer (approximately 17.3 years) than that of the business cycle (approximately 5.8 years), and that deleveraging has not yet matched the degree of deleveraging seen in previous downward phases. Our results suggest that further deleveraging is necessary, before we can expect to turn the financial corner.

中文翻译：

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南非金融周期及其与家庭去杠杆化的关系

本文考虑了自2007/2008年全球金融危机以来南非家庭的去杠杆化程度。我们将官方的南非储备银行商业周期方法学扩展到最新的金融周期，从中我们可以确定南非金融周期的高点和低谷可以追溯到1966年。我们的综合金融周期指数在1974年4月，1984年1月和2007年5月达到顶峰; 它在1979年7月和1999年2月触底反弹。因此，我们仍在等待低谷。我们进一步将当前下行阶段的去杠杆化过程与之前财务周期的经验进行比较和对比。我们发现，南非金融周期的平均周期（大约17.3年）比商业周期的平均周期（大约5.8年）长得多，而且去杠杆化还没有达到先前向下阶段所见的去杠杆化程度。我们的结果表明，在我们有望扭转财务困境之前，有必要进行进一步的去杠杆化。