Dashboard's objective

This dashboard is an interactive visualization tool designed to extend the empirical findings of my Master's thesis,
"What Drives Foreign Portfolio Investment Flows in South Africa?" (Bah & Giritli, 2020).

The main objective is to examine the macroeconomic indicators that push and/or pull Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) inflows into South Africa between 1980–2016,
and to allow policymakers, researchers, and students to interactively explore these relationships.

It implements the ARDL bounds testing approach to reveal both the long-run and short-run determinants of FPI, including:

• Push factors: US interest rates (USIR) and the US Industrial Production Index (IPI)
• Pull factors: Real GDP per capita (RGDPpc), Real Interest Rate (RIR), Real Exchange Rate (RER), and Government Expenditure (EXP)

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Research Contribution

This study and dashboard contribute to the existing literature by:

1. Focusing solely on FPI (unlike many prior studies that mixed it with FDI or other flows),
   enabling a more precise understanding of portfolio-specific determinants.
2. Using annual data (1980–2016) rather than quarterly data, which can fragment long-run trends.
3. Including new variables (e.g., Government Expenditure on infrastructural development) as potential pull factors not used in earlier South African studies.
4. Applying the ARDL methodology to accommodate a mix of I(0) and I(1) variables, providing robust estimates with small sample sizes.
5. Offering a reproducible, interactive format — this dashboard bridges academic research with a tool for exploration, teaching, and policy simulation.

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Key Findings from Thesis:

• Pull factors dominate in the long run — especially GDP per capita, government expenditure, and real interest rates.
• Push factors remain significant in the short run, with US interest rates and foreign industrial production influencing volatility.
• The economy reverts to equilibrium at a speed of ~73% following short-term shocks.

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Policy recommendation

• South Africa should continue toimprove their demand-side policies and also pay attention to their supply-side policies to continue achievingeconomic growth.
• A currency peg is an option for government agents to control theexchange rate variability in the country.
• The government also needs to widen its financial instruments in its stock market. Investors are attracted to avariety of financial instruments which spurs economic growth.

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Technical details

Stack

• Python: 3.11+
• UI: Streamlit
• Charts: Plotly Express (OLS trendlines use statsmodels)
• Data: SQLite (via SQLAlchemy)
• Config/Secrets: .env locally, st.secrets on Streamlit Cloud
• File formats: CSV / Excel (openpyxl)

Dashboard Features

• FPI Trends Over Time — See long-run patterns and shifts in FPI inflows.
• Push Factors — External influences such as USIR and IPI.
• Pull Factors — Domestic fundamentals like RGDPpc, RIR, RER, and EXP.
• Event Analysis — Highlight global and domestic shock years.
• Rolling & Lag Analysis — Explore dynamic correlations and short-run effects.
• ARDL Summary — Displays model coefficients and interpretations from thesis results.

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