This is a discussion of Ratfai (2007), presented at the 2007 Macroeconomics Workshop of the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis on "The Macroeconomics of Price Setting," May 10-11, 2007, University of Bologna, Rimini, Italy.

Economic theory provides clear suggestions in fixed versus flexible exchange rates dilemma in fighting high inflation pressures. However, relative diversity in exchange rate regimes in the European transition economies revealed uncertain and spurious conclusions about the exchange rate regime...

Studies on Malaysia monetary policy mostly examine the effect of monetary policy change on output and inflation in aggregate terms. While sectoral output effects of monetary policy have also been investigated, there is however a lack in the study on the effect of policy change on disaggregated...

In this paper we investigate the likelihood of a proposed monetary union in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) being successful from the viewpoint of the Generalised Purchasing Power Parity (GPPP) hypothesis and optimum currency area (OCA) theory. We apply Johansen’s...

This study attempts to measure the relative significance of structural shocks in explaining inflation. We use monthly time series data on key macroeconomic variables of Pakistan from July 1992 to June 2011, and structural vector auto-regressions (SVAR) to understand the role of supply and demand...

In this paper we investigate the role of inflation rates in determining economic growth in fifteen sub-Saharan African countries, which are all members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), between 1980 and 2009. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, suggest...

In this paper we investigate the role of inflation rates in determining economic growth in fifteen sub-Saharan African countries, which are all members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), between 1980 and 2009. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, suggest...

Market interest rates are usually determined not only by the inflation related determinants but also by the forces that affect real interest rates fluctuations. In point of fact the nominal interest rates are driven by many specific determinants so that it should not be clear the nominal...

In this paper we estimate a structural VAR model to identify the causes of inflation in Ecuador. To examine the VAR dynamics, we use the decomposition of the variance because it provides information about the relative importance of each shock to the variables in the VAR. We differ from previous...

This paper attempts to answer question similar to that asked by Ireland (2003): What explains the correlations between nominal and real variables in postwar US data? More precisely, this paper aims to investigate whether endogenous money, sticky wages, or some combination of the two, are...