Conjectures about inflation expectations are inextricably linked to our understanding of the relationship between the real and monetary sides of the economy; yet, direct empirical research on the matter has been scarce at best. This paper therefore examines the empirical properties of inflation...

This paper studies the relative performance of alternative monetary policy rules in the presence of oil price shocks in a small open economy optimizing model. Our analysis shows that it is important to distinguish between alternative price indices (CPI, core CPI, and GDP deflator) when modeling...

Available evidence supports the view that growth is faster in more open economies. In order to analyze the implications of openness and growth on determinacy and learnability of worldwide rational expectations equilibria we develop a two-country New Keynesian model with growth. We analyze these...

The paper reviews the recent conduct of monetary policy and the central bank’s rule-based behavior in Russia. Using different policy rules, we test whether the central bank in Russia reacts to changes in inflation, output gap and the exchange rate in a consistent and predictable manner. Our...

We analyze determinacy and stability under learning (E-stability) of rational expectations equilibria in the Blanchard and Galí (2006, 2008) New-Keynesian model of inflation and unemployment, where labor market frictions due to costs of hiring workers play an important role. We derive results...

This paper estimates a series of shocks to hit the US economy during the Great Depression, using a New Keynesian model with unemployment and bargaining frictions. Shocks to long-run inflation expectations appear to account for much of the cyclical behavior of employment, while an increase in...

There seems to be no consensus in the literature with respect to monetary policy strategies in combination with flexible exchange rate regimes. Therefore, this paper determines what the alternative strategies inflation targeting, Taylor rule, monetary conditions index, and managed floating have...

This paper assesses the prospects for the new Polish monetary policy strategy of inflation targeting. Regarding the general requirements for implementing an inflation targeting strategy it appears that Poland has made sufficient progress in reducing fiscal dominance and hardening budget...

Empirical data show that firms tend to improve their ranking in the productivity distribution over time. A sticky-price model with firm-level productivity growth fits this data and predicts that the optimal long-run inflation rate is positive and between 1.5% and 2% per year. In contrast, the...

Using a real-time data set for German GDP over the period from 1973 to 1998 we calculate various measures of real-time output gaps and use these to calibrate and estimate Taylor-type reaction functions for the Bundesbank. Most of the reaction functions we find fit the Bundesbank's actual policy,...