In assessing Alexander Swoboda's great influence on economics, two themes stand out: the determinants of global inflation, particularly in the 1970s, and the choice of an exchange rate regime consistent with domestic monetary and fiscal policies. Although seemingly narrowly focused on China, our...

The paper analyses the monetary policy operations of central banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We distinguish the pattern of monetary policy operations of the liquidity providing central banks of the large industrialized countries (creditor central banks) and the liquidity...

Monetary policy in CEE is an important determinant in the wage bargaining process, because trade unions have to predict inflation as one component of future real wages. This paper scrutinizes whether countries in CEE that officially announce an inflation target are tempted to act...

In this paper, I analyze determinants of carry trade returns in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). I show that carry trades to CEE were lucrative due to interest rate spreads between the funding and investment currency from 2004 to 2006. They became unprofitable when liquidity risk and exchange...

The impact of an unanticipated monetary shock in a small open economy with dollarization, factor price rigidities, and nontradeables is re-examined in an optimizing intertemporal general equilibrium model. The framework of an earlier study is extended to incorporate foreign real money balances...

In emerging market economies, transmission of monetary policy through the foreign exchange market is complicated by the coexistence of financial restrictions and arbitrages. Using China as an example, we show that the coexistence of exchange rate interventions, capital controls and an...

Using the IMF CGER methodology, we make an assessment of the current account and price competitiveness of the Central Eastern European Countries (CEEC) that joined the EU between 2004 and 2014. We present results for the “Macroeconomic Balance (MB)” approach, which provides a measure of...

Given low interest rates in the large industrial countries and buoyant capital inflows into the emerging markets East Asian central banks have accumulated large stocks of foreign reserves. As the resulting easing of monetary conditions has become a threat to domestic price and financial...

We review the literature on business-cycle correlation between the euro area and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention in recent years as new EU entrants prepare for participation in the monetary union. Our meta-analysis suggests several CEECs already...

The transition economies were remarkably successful in curbing the inflation that took place after the initial transition and shocks and, more recently, most of the countries have brought inflation down to the levels found in major developed countries. In this paper we review the experiences and...