We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many U.S. metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines...

We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures....

We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures....

We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures....

Guided by a macroeconomic model in which non-energy commodity prices are endogenously determined, we apply a new factor-based identification strategy to decompose the historical sources of changes in commodity prices and global economic activity. The model yields a factor structure for commodity...

The rapid increase in global liquidity and the large-scale net capital flows to emerging countries have raised serious concerns about adverse effects on the recipient countries; these include the danger of overheating, exchange rate appreciation pressures, inflationary pressure on consumer and...

This paper investigates to what extent Chinese monetary policy is constrained by the dollar peg. To this end, we use a cointegration framework to examine whether Chinese interest rates are driven by the Fed's policy. In a second step, we estimate a monetary model for China, in which we include...

Against the backdrop of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) increasing focus on crisis prevention measures and the G20's discussion of “global safety nets”, this paper analyses the IMF's tools for crisis prevention, with particular emphasis on the recently developed Flexible Credit Line...

The debt crisis in several member states of the euro area has raised doubts on the viability of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the future of the euro. While the launch of the euro in 1999 stirred a lot of interest in regional monetary integration and even monetary unification in...