In recent years, the decline in inflation in Angola has stalled and further steps may be needed to attain the authorities'' medium term goal of meeting the Southern African Development Community (SADC) convergence criteria of a low single digit inflation rate. A Vector Error Correction (VEC)...

In recent years, the decline in inflation in Angola has stalled and further steps may be needed to attain the authorities' medium term goal of meeting the Southern African Development Community (SADC) convergence criteria of a low single digit inflation rate. A Vector Error Correction (VEC)...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

This paper is a survey of deposit protection arrangements and it compares the key elements of deposit protection schemes around the world. There are more implicit arrangements that guarantee deposits than explicit ones, but there has been a growing tendency since the 1980s for countries to adopt...

The paper looks at the dynamics of employment in South Africa and examines the factors that contributed to the job-shedding observed during the recent financial crisis. The paper finds that the rapid growth of the real wage, which outpaced the labor productivity growth in most sectors, played an...

The paper investigates the non-performing loans (NPLs) in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE) in the period of 1998–2011. The paper finds that the level of NPLs can be attributed to both macroeconomic conditions and banks’ specific factors, though the latter set of factors was...

The study looks at the cyclical behavior of the markups and assesses its impact on inflation dynamics. The analysis finds that the aggregate level of the private sector's markup is relatively high, thus pointing to the lack of strong competition in South Africa's product markets. Additionally,...

This paper applies a state-space approach to estimate the implicit inflation target of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) since the adoption of the Inflation Targeting (IT) framework. The paper's findings are two. First, although the official inflation target range is 3.6 percent, in...

The limited access to bank credit in recent years has increased the pressure on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), forcing them to scale down investment plans and production. This paper, which explores the macroeconomic implications of this channel, finds evidence that countries with high...