Several recent studies imply that the response of national saving to fiscal policy is non-monotonic. In this paper, we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non-monotonic responses arise: one refers to a sample of OECD countries, as in previous studies, and one to a...

This paper is an attempt to provide an updated assessment of what we know and what do not know about the impact of monetary policy on the economy and what implications follow for the conduct of monetary policy in today's world. Firstly, we discuss the conditions under which monetary policy can...

Starting in the early 1990s, several emerging market and transition economies (EMEs) have adopted inflation targeting (IT). In this Paper we discuss a number of issues that arise in this context: (a) the definition of IT, (b) the role of preconditions for IT, (c) the use of intermediate exchange...

This Paper compares the social efficiency of monetary targeting and inflation targeting when central banks may have private information on shocks to money demand and, because of verifiability problems, the transparency solution is not feasible. Under inflation targeting and monetary targeting,...

This paper looks at how the reputation of a monetary policy-making committee is jointly determined with the reputations of its individual members. I ask whether individuals have more or less incentive to gain a reputation for being tough on inflation when they are part of a group. I examine the...

This Paper investigates the effects of exchange rate regimes and alternative monetary policy rules for an emerging market economy that is subject to a volatile external environment in the form of shocks to world interest rates and the terms of trade. In particular, we highlight the impact of...

The rapid growth of international reserves|a development concentrated in the emerging markets|remains a puzzle. In this paper we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital markets....

In this paper we investigate central bank accountability by looking at the effect of transparency in a simple monetary policy game with an overriding mechanism. Monetary policy is transparent if there is little uncertainty about the central banker's preferences for inflation stabilization...

Historical experience suggests that the distribution of monetary policy authority among the members of a monetary union is a key aspect of the design of a central bank constitution. We analyse alternative institutional solutions to that problem with different degrees of centralization of...

Nowadays a considerable amount of information on the behaviour of the economy is readily available, in the form of large datasets of macroeconomic variables. Central bankers can be expected to base their decisions on this very large information set. Yet the academic profession has shown a clear...