However, as indicated by significantly low growth rates of commercial bank credit, demand remained subdued for both businesses and households. Households were also affected by generally low wage increases, and a salary freeze for civil servants. Although the annual growth rate of government expenditure slowed significantly in 2009, it was still higher than initially budgeted.
41  Since then, advances in econometric techniques have allowed researchers to better specify and construct uncertainty variables and thus to measure the impact of inflation uncertainty on contract duration. For example, early empirical work by Christofides and Wilton (1983) used a rolling regression technique to calculate inflation uncertainty.