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...

Recent research has shown that economic conditions have an important effect on real commodity prices. We quantify the contribution of fluctuations in inflation to this particular link. In the data, a temporary rise in inflation causes real commodity prices to rise, as does a rise in trend...

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 shows that ination in industrialized countries is largely a global phenom- enon. First, inations of (22) OECD countries have a common factor that alone accounts for nearly 70% of their variance. This large variance share that is associated to Global Ination is not only due to the...

Money illusion is frequently invoked and frequently resisted by economists. Resisted as it contradicts the maximizing paradigm of microeconomic theory and invoked since a tendency to think in nominal rather than real terms becomes evident in the behavior of agents. This paper rationalizes money...

Monetary policy rule parameters estimated with conventional estimation techniques can be severely biased if the estimation sample includes periods of low interest rates. Nominal interest rates cannot be negative, so that censored regression methods like Tobit estimation have to be used to...

Inflation targeting was adopted by several countries, including Sweden, in the 1990s. We evaluate the Swedish inflation targeting regime since 1995 using a novel approach based on a unique data set on the characteristics of collective wage agreements between 1908 and 2008. First, we establish...

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by Norges Bank which is recognized as a successful forecast targeting central bank. It is reasonable to expect that Norges Bank produces inflation forecasts that are on average better than other forecasts, both 'naïve' forecasts, and forecasts from...

This paper assesses to what extent the arguments put forward in the consensus debate can help explain the different economic performance of Latin American and Asian countries. The paper shows that Latin America and fast-growing Asia indeed differ significantly with respect to all economic policy...

This paper discusses alternative adjustment patterns in Bolivia over the last three decades using a SAM-based model that explicitly separates formal from informal activities, includes separate accumulation balance adjustments for different economic agents, differentiates closures by periods of...