This paper uses wavelets to develop a core inflation measure for inflation targeting central banks. The analysis is applied to the case of New Zealand – the country with the longest history of explicit inflation targeting. We compare the performance of our proposed measure against some popular...

Counterfactual experiments with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's core model provide some insight into the implications for New Zealand's economic performance over the 1990s, had it credibly fixed its currency to the Australian dollar. If New Zealand had faced the relatively more stimulatory...

Transmission mechanisms are the channels through which monetary policy affects macroeconomic variables, such as GDP and inflation. Differences in transmission mechanisms can generate asymmetric behaviour among currency union partners when they experience shocks. This has the potential to widen...

This paper uses a structural vector autoregression model to analyse the relationship between migration flows, housing construction and house prices in New Zealand. It shows that a net immigration flow equal to one percent of the population is associated with an approximately 10 percent increase...

This paper presents the novel implications of introducing price rigidities into a model of good-specific habit formation, for the response of private consumption following a positive government spending shock. With 'deep' habits in demand, the price elasticity of demand rises after the fiscal...

We estimate changes in the volatility of firm-level sales, earnings and employment growth of US firms. Our method differs from existing measures for firm-level sales and employment volatility in that it not only captures longer-run changes in volatility, but also measures cyclical changes in...

This paper examines the relationship between wages and consumer prices in New Zealand over the last 15 years. Reflecting the open nature of the New Zealand economy, the headline CPI is disaggregated into non-tradable and tradable prices. We find that there is a joint causality between wages and...

The nature of expectations matters when conducting monetary policy. Models with a learning process can exhibit very different properties from models with other types of expectations rules. This paper draws on the work of Orphanides and Williams (2002), extending it to allow for the possibility...

One of the main indicators of inflationary pressures used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is the output gap. The output gap is not directly observable and estimates have to be inferred from the data. This paper evaluates whether the output gap, however measured, is a good indicator of...

New Zealand and Australia have recently had large import price increases on the back of currency depreciations. Despite these large import price shocks, consumer prices have not risen as strongly as would be suggested by previously accepted relationships. The recent prolonged period of general...