In this paper I reflect on my first year as Governor of the Bank of Israel, which I joined in May 2005. I start by describing the current state of the Israeli economy and monetary policy and economic developments during the past year. I then review a series of issues that have arisen during the...

The simplest macroeconomic models in which markets clear instantaneously, and expectations are rational preclude the existence of "business cycles," that is, of serially correlated deviations of output from trend. This paper studies one of several mechanisms that can be used to make these...

In 1944 Franco Modigliani published a famous article summarizing the Keynesian model; in 1963 he extended the 1944 framework. This paper,written for a conference in honor of Modigliani, asks how the earlier papers would be modified in the light of recent developments in macroeconomics. The...

A given amount of seigniorage revenue can be collected at either a high or a low rate of inflation. Thus there ray be two equilibria when a government finances its deficit by printing money--implying that an economy may be stuck in a high inflation equilibrium when, with the same fiscal policy,...

This paper examines the case for rules rather than discretion in the conduct of monetary policy, from both historical and analytic perspectives. The paper starts with the rules of the game under the gold standard. These rules were ill-defined and not adhered to; active discretionary policy was...

A country that decides to fix its exchange rate thereby gives up control over its own inflation rate and the determination of the revenue received from seigniorage. If the country goes further and uses a foreign money, it loses all seigniorage. This paper uses an optimal inflation tax approach...

Models of inflation and growth in the sixties emphasized the portfolio substitution mechanism by which higher inflation made capital more attractive to hold relative to money, leading to higher capital intensity, and in the transition period to higher growth.The empirical evidence, however, is...