Most emerging market economies (EMEs) which have implemented inflation targeting (IT) have continued to experience large, frequent and sometimes persistent inflation target misses. At the same time these countries had reformed their institutional structures when implementing IT. In this paper we...

Commodity terms of trade shocks have continued to drive macroeconomic ‡uctuations in most emerging market economies. The volatility and persistence of these shocks have posed great challenges for monetary policy. This study employs a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium...

The focus of this paper is on the presence of economies of scale in administering pension funds. We make use of a unique dataset with extensive information on South African retirement funds from 1996 to 2006. For almost fifty years now, South Africa has operated under a system with small social...

Deficits in the South African current account since 2003 have been met with growing concern by economists. As these deficits reached unprecedented levels, questions about the sustainability of the country's external position have begun to arise. This paper tests the sustainability of South...

Since the seminal work of Jappelli (1990), it has become standard to identify as liquidity-constrained, borrowers who were either turned down for credit or did not apply because they might be turned down. In this paper, we show that the so-called “denied or discouraged†proxy does not...

This paper empirically assesses whether banking regulation is effective at preventing banking crises. We use a monthly index of banking system fragility, which captures almost every source of risk in the banking system, to estimate the effect of regulatory measures (entry restriction, reserve...

This paper brings together and adds structure to the empirical literature on the link between banking regulation and banking system stability. In addition to clarifying the theoretical underpinnings for studying banking regulation, it points to several directions for future empirical research,...

The Basel Accords promote the adoption of capital adequacy requirements to increase the banking sector's stability. Unfortunately, this type of regulation can hamper economic growth by shifting banks' portfolios from more productive, risky investment projects toward less productive but safer...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of institutions on fixed capital accumulation over time in two developing countries, both former German colonies: Namibia and Tanzania. This is motivated by two recent underpinning theories: the new institutional theory, which views institutions...

To the extent that in utero and childhood malnutrition negatively affects later stage mental and physical health, it can possibly constrain later stage human capital acquisition, which is an important driver of economic growth. This paper considers the impact of famine on aggregate adolescent...