It is forgivable to think that an oil shock mainly hurts at the petrol pump. After all, that is where households feel it first. But when my colleagues and I at the Bureau for Economic Research started digging through South Africa’s fuel data, a different story emerged – one that says as much about the country’s infrastructure failures as it does about global geopolitics.
As we began modelling the likely impact on the South African economy, it quickly became clear that diesel would inflict even more pain on the economy than petrol. (Our insights are based on ongoing analysis that has not yet been published.)
