Resource utilisation, or “slack”, is widely held to be an important determinant of inflation dynamics. As the world has become more globalised in recent decades, some have argued that the relevant concept of slack should be global rather than domestic (the “global slack hypothesis”)....

In the face of the recent financial crisis, central banks have varied the size and structure of their balance sheets. Such actions attempt to exploit additional instruments of central bank policy that go beyond the traditional monetary policy instrument (ie control over the shortterm interest...

The paper uses disaggregated price data to determine whether the higher moments of the distribution of relative price changes provide information on the adjustments and persistence of aggregate price conditions in the Philippines. It takes into account the changes that occurred in relative price...

Globalisation has contributed positively to the global economy in terms of economic growth and welfare. However, especially amid rising global interdependence, closer synchronisation of business and financial cycles and stronger linkages across monetary, macroprudential and fiscal policies, as...

The size of gross external portfolio holdings has among many countries increased substantially over the recent past. Over the same period the volatility of inflation has declined in most countries. Many previous papers argue that financial globalisation has led to improved policy-making and...

The composition of public debt by maturity is irrelevant in the standard New Keynesian model of monetary policy. Nevertheless, central banks have, since the outset of the crisis, purchased large amounts of government bonds in the attempt to support economic activity and stem deflationary...

The enormous increase in the United Kingdom's national debt during the two world wars of the 20th century meant that government debt management, which had hitherto been regarded as a matter of ‘budgetary convenience', acquired great macroeconomic significance. The paper examines and compares...

Over the last decade, emerging market economies have faced shocks arising from both external events and idiosyncratic factors. Brazil took advantage of benign conditions in the first decade of the century to substantially increase its foreign reserves, achieving reserves adequacy on several...

This paper explores the behaviour of inflation forecasts from a variety of sources (ie Consensus and other professional forecasters, international and domestic financial institutions, central banks) with the aim of measuring the size and evolution of forecast disagreements and their proximate...