This paper seeks to advance the discussion of monetary policy strategies in several ways. One involves a comparison of targets for nominal GNP and the price level, with emphasis on specificational robustness and implications for output variability. A second pertains to various “indicator”...

This paper examines the dynamics of the foreign exchange market. The first half addresses a number of key questions regarding the forecasts of future exchange rates made by market participants, by means of updated estimates using survey data. Here we follow most of the theoretical and empirical...

This paper presents three empirical approaches to forecasting inflation in Pakistan. The preferred approach is a leading indicators model in which broad money growth and private sector credit growth help forecast inflation. A univariate approach also yields reasonable forecasts, but seems less...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the sources of Mexico’s economic growth since the 1960s, and compares various decompositions of historical growth into trend and cyclical components. The role of the implied output gaps in the inflation process is assessed. The paper presents...

Pakistan undertook major financial sector reforms starting in the late 1980s. The effects of these reforms on the profitability and cost and revenue efficiency of the banking sector are evaluated. The revenue performance of all banks, and especially the privatized banks, improved significantly,...

This paper investigates the relationship between unrecorded economic activity associated with the production of illicit coca and formally recorded economic activity in Peru. It does so by attempting to construct new regional level estimates for coca production and by implementing recently...

The paper developes a VAR macrofinance model of the Czech economy. It shows that yield misalignments from the yields implied by the macrofinance model partially determine subsequent yield changes over three to nine months. These yield misalignments tend to persist for a number of months. This...

To estimate the New Keynesian model, we use four key macroeconomic series for Thailand. The priors are chosen to reflect general considerations of the appropriate model dynamics and our judgment about the Thai economy. The model is solved initially so that the baseline forecast replicates staff...

Lebanon’s credit growth in 2008–10 has been concentrated in trade and services, household loans, and the construction sector. These sectors accounted for almost 80 percent of all new loans extended since 2008. Real estate lending in particular has been increased substantially. On...

Overall competitiveness of the Dutch economy seems adequate, but domestically produced exports have lost market share recently. Over the past three decades, globalization has greatly influenced economies as countries have become more integrated. Empirical studies on business cycles...