This paper analyses inflation dynamics in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) using a constructed dataset for country-specific commodity price indices and panel cointegrated vector autoregressive (VAR) models. Imported commodity price shocks are significant in explaining...

This paper explores inflation determinants within the EU and implications for new members' euro adoption plans. Factor analysis partitions observed inflation in EU25 countries into common-origin and country-specific (idiosyncratic) components. Cross-country differences in common-origin inflation...

When faced with a relative price shock, monetary authorities often aim to contain its second round effects on inflation while accepting first round effects. We analyze the experience of South Africa and other inflation targeters to explore whether and when this policy prescription implies...

This paper discusses interlinkages between Poland and the euro zone using a simple and agnostic econometric approach. Specifically, we estimate a trend-cycle VAR model using data for real and nominal variables, imposing powerful but uncontroversial assumptions that allow us to identify how...

This paper studies inflation dynamics during 25 historical episodes in advanced economies where output remained well below potential for an extended period. We find that such episodes generally brought about significant disinflation, underpinned by weak labor markets, slowing wage growth, and,...

This paper discusses comovement between inflation and output in the euro area. The strength of the comovement may not be apparent at first sight, but is clear at business cycle frequencies. Our results suggest that at business cycle frequency, the output and core inflation comovement is high and...

We develop a semi-structural new-Keynesian open-economy model, with separate food and non-food inflation dynamics, for forecasting and monetary policy analysis in low-income countries and apply it to Kenya. We use the model to run several policy-relevant exercises. First, we filter international...

The Burundian economy faced several adverse shocks. The government responded by allowing greater exchange rate flexibility and by tightening its monetary policy. The fiscal stance was in line with the program, and program implementation has been broadly satisfactory despite difficult...

This paper presents an empirical investigation of inflation dynamics in Libya over the period 1964–2010, using cointegration and error correction models. While inflation inertia is found to be a key determinant of consumer price inflation, the econometric results indicate that government...

Many central banks target an inflation rate near two percent. This essay argues that policymakers would do better to target four percent inflation. A four percent target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic...