This paper explores three areas in which the experience of the Great Depression might be relevant today: monetary policy, fiscal policy and the systemic stability of the banking system. We confirm the consensus on monetary policy: deflation must be avoided. With regard to fiscal policy, the...

In this paper I address the following questions. - Has the business cycle become longer and shallower? And why? - How stabilizing is monetary policy. In answering these questions I summarize recent research undertaken by Adrian Pagan and myself that formalizes the procedures developed by Burns...

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneously maintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subject to the constraints imposed by the Trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In this paper we overview and contrast...

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneously maintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subject to the constraints imposed by the Trilemma, in the era of deepening globalization. In this paper we study the Trilemma...

The last decade has seen a worldwide move by emerging markets to adopt explicit or implicit inflation targeting regimes. A notable and often discussed exception to this trend, of course, is China which follows pegged exchange rate regime supported by capital controls. Another major exception is...

The R word has begun to appear in the media again bringing with it three technical questions viz, How will we know we are in recession? How will we know when it has ended? And How can we forecast its onset and ending? This paper does not provide answers to these questions rather it focuses on...

The ultimate objective of this paper is to discuss the duration of business cycles and the related issue of the probability of recession. To reach that objective it is necessary to first agree on a definition of business cycles. It is also necessary to agree on how to define the key features of...

Recent events suggest that the death of the business cycle has been exaggerated; the issue of how one learns about and monitors the business cycle remains centre stage. Advent of the Euro and the potential for tensions when sovereign nations subsume their monetary policy into a single response...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Australian Industry Group / PricewaterhouseCoopers Performance of Manufacturing Index (Ai-PMI) as a tool for analysis. Particular interest focuses on the issue of how useful it is as an early signal of Australian business cycle turning points.

A key challenge for macroeconomic policy in open economies is how to simultaneously manage exchange rates, interest rates and capital account openness—the trilemma. This paper calculates a trilemma index for India and investigates its evolution over time. We find that financial integration has...