In the wake of the gGreat Recessionh of 2007-09, recent studies have emphasized the importance of the ginternational finance multiplier (IFM)h mechanism for inter- national business cycles, using calibrated two-country models. This paper develops and estimates a two- country model with the IFM...

We tackle the important issue of what the appropriate trends in the real Yen-Dollar andRMB-Dollar are over time. Over the long-run, the real yen has been appreciating against the U.S. dollar; while the real RMB-dollar rate has been depreciating (until 1999). In this paper, we build a...

A central result in international macroeconomics is that a government cannot simultaneously opt for open financial markets, fixed exchange rates, and monetary autonomy; rather, it is constrained to choosing no more than two of these three. In the wake of the Great Recession, however, there has...

The paper identifies and evaluates consequences for monetary policy of five features of East Asian development: export orientation, integrated regional trade, bank-dependent finance, the potential for persistent trade surpluses, and the aggressive accumulation of international reserves. The case...

We study the interaction between population demographics, the desire for redistribution in the economy, and the optimal inflation rate in a deterministic economy with capital. The intergenerational redistribution tension is intrinsic in the general equilibrium life-cycle models we use. Young...

Independent central banking is reviewed as it emerged first under the gold standard and later with an inconvertible paper money. Monetary and credit policy are compared and contrasted as practiced by the 19th century Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. The lesson is that wide operational...

A notable feature of the Japanese economy following the banking crisis of the late 1990s is the drastic decline in the velocity of money and the consequent decline in the price level. Based on the inventory model of money demand a la Alvarez, Atkeson, and Edmond (2009), we explore how...

Using a newly-constructed panel data set which includes annual estimates of lending rates for 47 Japanese prefectures, we analyze why interest rates converged over the period 1884-1925. We find evidence that technological innovations and institutional changes played an important role in creating...

Despite the theoretical prediction based on sticky-price models, it is empirically suggested that the tie between the frequencies of price adjustment across goods and the relative price responses of goods (price index of specific goods over non-durable aggregate price index) to a monetary policy...

The co-movement of output across the sector producing non- durables (that is, non-durable goods and services) and the sector producing durables is well-established in the monetary business-cycle literature. However, standard sticky-price models that incorporate sectoral heterogeneity in price...