This paper challenges the time-inconsistency case for central bank independence. It argues that the time-inconsistency literature not only seriously confuses the substance of the rules versus discretion debate, but also posits an implausible view of monetary policy. Most worrisome, the...

Differences in growth, productivity and inflation levels are going to be a prominent feature of the future of EMU, as the convergence process is still ongoing in the new Member States. This convergence process can be described by the Balassa-Samuelson proposition, which states that faster growth...

This paper develops and estimates an unobserved components model for purposes of monetary policy analysis and inflation targeting in a small open economy. Cyclical components are modeled as a multivariate linear rational expectations model of the monetary transmission mechanism, while trend...

This paper re-examines the behavioral responses of key macroeconomic variables in Canada to exogenous shocks to the relative price of investment goods. It does so by developing a stylized two-sector real business cycle model which is simulated to explore its ability to shed new light on the...

El objetivo de este paper es realizar una descripción del caso brasileño, en lo que hace a la salida de un sistema en el cual el ancla nominal de la economía era un tipo de cambio semi-fijo, hacia un régimen de flotación “cuasi” limpia de la moneda, en el que el ancla de la economía...

El tema de la inflación ha sido uno de los más debatidos en los últimos meses. Los incrementos de precios registrados en el primer trimestre de 2005 han avivado la discusión. Este trabajo muestra que el problema está lejos de estar fuera de control y que determinadas medidas de política...

Territorial appointees to an independent central bank (e.g. District Federal Reserve Banks’ presidents, Governors of national central banks at the ECB’s Governing Council) are liable to confront a “role conflict” stemming from a duality of loyalties and allegiances - to the home regional...

Current monetary policy involves the manipulation of the Central Bank interest rate (the repo rate), with the specific objective of achieving the goal(s) of monetary policy. The latter is normally the inflation rate, although in a number of instances this may include the level of economic...

The paper presents a structural model framework for a small open economy. The model, based on optimising households and firms, has been calibrated on Czech macroeconomic data in order to develop an analytic framework suitable for analysing key policy questions related to the Czech Republic’s...

This paper investigates in a consistent semi-structural empirical framework three current issues of monetary policy in the euro area. First, regarding policy transmission we offer a three-stage procedure to combine the efficient estimation of economic structure prior to EMU with current ECB...