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,...

The main purpose of this paper is to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa. The analysis extracts the index by applying two alternative approaches (principal component analysis and Kalman filter), which identify an unobservable common factor from a group of external and...

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...

This paper presents an empirical examination of political cycles in Israel by examining the instruments of fiscal and monetary policy at the time of election campaigns. In common with the findings of similar empirical studies undertaken elsewhere, the economic data for Israel support the theory...

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,...

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)...