It is often said that after the crisis economic textbooks have to be rewritten. However, as surveys show, almost all professors continue using the standard IS-LM/AS-AD model as the workhorse for undergraduate training. This paper shows that the IS-LM/AS-AD model is not only full of obvious...

Over the last decade a new consensus model has emerged in monetary macroeconomics, labelled New Keynesian macroeconomics (Clarida et al., 1999). It consists of three simple building blocs: a forward-looking IS-equation that is derived from the optimization problem of a representative household,...

We develop an institutional framework for central banks that try to pursue a stability-oriented monetary policy with the strategy of exchange rate targeting. Recent experience shows that a crucial element of this approach is to avoid destabilising capital inflows. Policy makers can exert...

Although there seems to be a broad consensus among economists that purely floating or completely fixed exchange rates (the so-called corner solutions) are the only viable alternatives of exchange rate management, many countries do not behave according to this paradigm and adopt a strategy within...

We develop an institutional framework for central banks that try to pursue a stability-oriented monetary policy in open-economies by directly targeting the exchange rate. Our main intention is to design a framework which avoids excessive capital inflows that can be regarded as a main cause of...

In this paper we carry over a static version of a New Keynesian Macro Model developed in previous papers (see Bofinger, Mayer, and Wollmershäuser 2002) to a monetary union. For a similar approach see (Uhlig 2002). We will show in particular that a harmonious functioning of a monetary union...

The empirical performance of macroeconomic exchange rate models is more than disappointing. This dismal result is also reflected in the forecasting capabilities of professional analysts: all in all, analysts are not in a position to beat naïve random walk forecasts. The root for this deficient...

Within this paper we specify a symmetric two country model for the euro area to evaluate monetary and fiscal policy interaction with decentralized fiscal authorities. Obviously this calls for rules which neatly balance the chances and perils. Thereby we show that stringent rules are a...

The study analyses the characteristics of professional exchange rate forecasts for the /US-$ rate. The results indicate that the quality of forecasts produced by profes-sional economists is rather poor and incompatible with the rational expectations hy-pothesis. This dismal result is according...

For the open economy the workhorse model in intermediate textbooks still is the Mundell-Fleming model, which basically extends the IS-LM model to open economy problems. The purpose of this paper is to present a simple New Keynesian model of the open economy, that introduces open economy...