IESET.
Hypotheses·regulatory·banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014

South Africa's August 2014 African Bank Limited curatorship — SARB-led resolution of an unsecured-consumer-credit lender, retail-deposit guarantee, good-bank / bad-bank split, no propagation to systemic banks (Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank) — is a canonical case of a contained-resolution single-institution failure in an emerging market with an effective supervisory framework.

The hypothesis is that South Africa 2014 meets a deliberately-narrow checklist on at least 3 of 4 metrics WITHOUT producing a Laeven-Valencia coded systemic crisis or material macro impact.

SUPPORTEDengine/runs/banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014

SUPPORTED

confidence cueThis is a clear pass for the claim as written. It still applies only to this sample, period, and method.

policy briefClear support

In ordinary language

In plain terms, this asks whether the policy story survives a real-world data check from 2010 to 2018.

plain answer

The data clearly moved in the predicted direction. SUPPORTED

why it matters

This matters because regulatory claims should change belief only when they survive a pre-declared empirical test.

how the test works

It compares 1 country or place units from 2010 to 2018, using a multi metric checklist design.

what was measured
What we checked
  • Real income growth
  • Bank npl ratio
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

4 input datasets, 0 unresolved missing series, provenance status: reproducible hash verified.

Results

engine/runs/banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014
1007550250201020142018ZAF
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show real_gdp_growth across 1 sampled countries over 2010–2018.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014/chart_data.json.

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-05-01T09:29:46Z
Run timestamp predates this path's first git-add commit (rebase, rename, or pre-git local run). Spec hash is still the path's first-add commit — not repository HEAD — but ordering is not a clean pre-registration proof.

South Africa's August 2014 African Bank Limited curatorship — SARB-led resolution of an unsecured-consumer-credit lender, retail-deposit guarantee, good-bank / bad-bank split, no propagation to systemic banks (Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank) — is a canonical case of a contained-resolution single-institution failure in an emerging market with an effective supervisory framework. The hypothesis is that South Africa 2014 meets a deliberately-narrow checklist on at least 3 of 4 metrics WITHOUT producing a Laeven-Valencia coded systemic crisis or material macro impact.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Evaluate every canonical_metrics row against its pre-registered source, window, and threshold. The hypothesis is SUPPORTED if at least 3 of 4 metrics are MET. It is REFUTED if even counting all pending metrics as favorable cannot reach 3 MET metrics and the confirmed failures cross the pre-registered refutation guardrail. Otherwise the verdict is INCONCLUSIVE until pending data or pending evaluation metrics are resolved.

formal test & threshold
test:      multi_metric_checklist_canonical_banking_crisis
threshold: MET >= 3 of 4; REFUTE when MET + PENDING_DATA + PENDING_EVAL < 3; refutation guardrail=1

Method

Template
multi_metric_checklist
Clustering
none
Sample
1 countries · 2010 – 2018
Evidence type
canonical_case_multi_metric

Canonical-case checklist evaluator reads canonical_metrics and multi_metric_falsification; no regression model is estimated. Each metric is scored against its pre-registered source, window, and threshold before applying the count rule below.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
real_gdp_growth
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZGtier 2
annual_yoy
bank_npl_ratio
outcome
world_bank_wdi:FB.AST.NPER.ZStier 2
peak_level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014

Verdict: supported

Reason: 4 of 4 metrics met threshold (support threshold 3)

Pre-registered rule: SUPPORT if >= 3 of 4 metrics met; REFUTE if <= 1 met (impossible to hit support).

Counts: 4 MET · 0 NOT_MET · 0 PENDING_DATA · 0 PENDING_EVAL

Primary country: ZAF

Metric-by-metric

| # | Metric | Status | Observed | Threshold | Notes | |---|---|:---:|---:|---|---| | 1 | african_bank_curatorship_2014 | MET | 1 (2014) [yes_no_indicator_max] | yes/no — yes counts as breach | yes/no event evaluated from binary event indicator | | 2 | good_bank_bad_bank_split | MET | 1 (2016) [yes_no_indicator_max] | yes/no — yes counts as breach | yes/no event evaluated from binary event indicator | | 3 | laeven_valencia_no_systemic_coding | MET | 0 (2014) [coded_no_indicator_max] | coded NO — supports the contained-resolution framing | coded NO evaluated from binary event indicator | | 4 | real_gdp_undisturbed | MET | 1.32 (2015) [annual_growth_rate_value] | annual growth >= 1% in each of 2014 and 2015 | annual growth values: 2014=1.414, 2015=1.322; threshold each >=1 |

Claim

South Africa's August 2014 African Bank Limited curatorship — SARB-led resolution of an unsecured-consumer-credit lender, retail-deposit guarantee, good-bank / bad-bank split, no propagation to systemic banks (Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank) — is a canonical case of a contained-resolution single-institution failure in an emerging market with an effective supervisory framework. The hypothesis is that South Africa 2014 meets a deliberately-narrow checklist on at least 3 of 4 metrics WITHOUT producing a Laeven-Valencia coded systemic crisis or material macro impact.

Interpretation

The canonical-case pattern match is satisfied: 4 of 4 pre-registered metrics meet their thresholds, above the support threshold of 3. Each metric is drawn from an independent data source and measures a different causal layer, so the probability of this pattern arising from a data-pipeline fault across all sources simultaneously is low.

Steelman live concerns

See hypotheses/steelman/banking_crisis_south_africa_african_bank_2014.md for the strongest opposing arguments. Canonical-case multi-metric evidence is a pattern match, not a causal identification — the result card should be read as 'outcome trajectory matches the predicted pattern to degree X' rather than 'policy P caused the outcome'.

Provenance

Vintages pinned in manifest.yaml. Full per-metric diagnostics in diagnostics.json. Machine-readable results in metric_results.parquet.

Strongest opposing argument

Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.