This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

This paper examines empirically the Phillips curve relationship for the Chinese economy. We use quarterly data that go back to 1978 and employ a multivariate rather than univariate method in the construction of gap measures for inflation, money and output jointly with reliable error bands. Our...

We reinterpret post World War II US economic history using an estimated microfounded model that allows for changes in the monetary/fiscal policy mix. We find that the fiscal authority was the leading authority in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. The appointment of Volcker marked a change in the...

This paper reviews recent advances in the specification and estimation of Bayesian Vector Autoregressive models (BVARs). After describing the general principle of Bayesian estimation applied to a VAR, we first present the methodology originally developed by Litterman (1986) and Doan et Al....

In this paper we examine which macroeconomic and financial variables have most predictive ability for the federal funds target rate decisions made by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). We conduct the analysis for the 157 FOMC decisions during the period January 1990–June 2008, using...

In this paper we estimate ideal points of Bank Presidents and Board Governors at the FOMC. We use stated preferences from FOMC transcipts and estimate a hierarchical spatial voting model. We find a clear difference between the average Board Governor and Bank President. We find little evidence...

This paper presents a DSGE model in which agents׳ learning about the economy can endogenously generate time-varying macroeconomic volatility. Economic agents use simple models to form expectations and need to learn the relevant parameters. Their gain coefficient is endogenous and is adjusted...

Through the lens of the Taylor rule, this paper is concerned with the circumstances in which the Fed would change its behavior. A Bayesian MCMC method is proposed to deal with a switching Taylor rule robust to zero lower bound and heteroscedasticity. The posterior results from Markov-switching...

In this paper we estimate spatial voting models for the analysis of the voting record of the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England. We use a flexible Bayesian approach for estimating such models. A simple modification to the standard spatial model as well as a variety of model checks...