This chapter aims to provide a hands-on approach to New Keynesian models and their uses for macroeconomic policy analysis. It starts by reviewing the origins of the New Keynesian approach, the key model ingredients and representative models. Building blocks of current-generation dynamic...

The global financial crisis and the ensuing criticism of macroeconomics have inspired researchers to explore new modeling approaches. There are many new models that deliver improved estimates of the transmission of macroeconomic policies and aim to better integrate the financial sector in...

We calibrate a standard New Keynesian model with three alternative representations of monetary policy- an optimal timeless rule, a Taylor rule and another with interest rate smoothing- with the aim of testing which if any can match the data according to the method of indirect inference. We find...

A sizeable literature examines exchange rate pass-through to disaggregated import prices but very few micro-studies focus on consumer prices. This paper explores exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices in South Africa during 2002-2007, using a unique data set of highly disaggregated data...

Central bank transparency has become the topic of a lively public and academic debate on monetary policy. Unfortunately, it has been complicated by the fact that transparency is a qualitative concept that is hard to measure. This Paper proposes a comprehensive index for central bank transparency...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the ‘quantitative easing’ policy, as officially implemented by the Bank of England since March 2009. A policy of the same name had previously been implemented in Japan, which serves as a reference. While the majority of the previous literature has...

Using a unique monthly data set over the period 2000:1–2008:12, this paper presents empirical findings on China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, from the viewpoint of its financial strength and the cost of monetary policy instruments. The results show that PBoC is constrained by the...

We document a behavioral idiosyncrasy in which Federal Reserve Bank presidents prefer tighter monetary policy at the end of their tenures. This suggests that consensus building on the Federal Open Market Committee occurs by moderating the policy preferences expressed by the presidents, rather...

The paper aims at determining upper boundaries of accuracy ("error minima") for German macroeconomic forecasts. The study is based on simulations with the RWI-model, a medium sized macroeconometric model for the FRG. A first upper limit of forecast accuracy is fixed by the accuracy of...

Purpose – The latest generation of research into macroeconomic policy has turned from more technical aspects of optimal control and expectations formation to consideration of the policymaking institutions themselves. More and more countries have moved towards greater degrees of central bank...