This paper empirically studies the impact of the quality of political institutions on the link between central bank independence and inflation. Making use of data on the evolution of central bank independence over time and controlling for possible nonlinearities, we employ interaction models to...

How many people should decide about monetary policy? In this paper, we take an empirical perspective on this issue, analyzing the relationship between the number of monetary policy decision-makers and monetary policy outcomes. Using a new data set that characterizes Monetary Policy Committees...

Greater international economic interconnectedness over recent decades has been changing inflation dynamics. This paper presents evidence that the expansion of global value chains (GVCs), ie cross-border trade in intermediate goods and services, is an important channel through which global...

We document that observed international input-output linkages contribute substantially to synchronizing producer price inflation (PPI) across countries. Using a multi-country, industry-level dataset that combines information on PPI and exchange rates with international and domestic input-output...

Since the 1980s inflationary pressures seem to materialize overproportionately outside of the sectors of consumer goods and services. We combine the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices with indices for asset prices, such as stocks and real estate, as well as the costs of public goods to develop...

We study optimal monetary policy during temporary supply contractions when aggregate demand has inertia and expansionary policy is constrained. In this environment, it is optimal to run the economy hot until supply recovers. Positive output gaps in the low-supply phase lessen the negative output...

Is inflation (still) a global phenomenon? We study the international co-movement of inflation based on a dynamic factor model and in a sample spanning up to 56 countries during the 1960-2023 period. Over the entire period, a first global factor explains approximately 58% of the variation in...

The paper analyses the reasons for Japan's persistently low inflation since the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy (low inflation conundrum). It is shown that Japan experienced a structural break from a high-growth period with relatively high inflation to a low-growth period with...

This paper estimates a time-varying AR-GARCH model of inflation producing measures of inflation uncertainty for the euro area, and investigates the linkages between them in a VAR framework, also allowing for the possible impact of the policy regime change associated with the start of EMU in...

There is no consensus about the causes of the reduction in business cycle volatility seen in many major economies over the last decade. Using stylised models of the economies of the US, Euro area, UK and Japan, we argue that economic stability has been fostered by improved monetary policy and by...