Assigning a discretionary central bank a mandate to stabilize an average inflation rate - rather than a period-by-period inflation rate - increases welfare in a New Keynesian model with an occasionally binding lower bound on nominal interest rates. Under rational expectations, the...

Informality is an entrenched structural trait in emerging market economies, despite of the progress achieved in macroeconomic management. Informality determines the behavior of labour markets, financial access and the productivity of the overall economy. Therefore it influences the transmission...

Central banks' announcements that rates are expected to remain low could signal either a weak macroeconomic outlook, which would slow expenditures, or a more accommodative stance, which may stimulate economic activity. We use the Survey of Professional Forecasters to show that, when the Fed gave...

Beginning with the global financial crisis (2008) the correlation between crude oil prices and medium-term and forward inflation expectations increased leading to fears of their un-anchoring. Using the first principal component of commodity prices as a measure for global aggregate demand, we...

We document that observed international input-output linkages contribute substantially to synchronizing producer price inflation (PPI) across countries. Using a multi-country, industry-level dataset that combines information on PPI and exchange rates with international and domestic input-output...

This paper uses a cross-country database covering 46 economies over the post-war period to revisit two key monetary facts: (i) the long-run link between money growth and inflation and (ii) the link between credit growth and financial crises. The analysis reveals that the former has weakened over...

Several countries are concurrently experiencing historically low inflation rates and ageing populations. Is there a connection, as recently suggested by some senior central bankers? We undertake a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in a panel of 22 countries over the 1955-2010 period. We find...

How central banks can best communicate to the market is an increasingly important topic in the central banking literature. With ever greater frequency, central banks communicate to the market through the forecasts of prices and output with the purposes of reducing uncertainty; at the same time,...

The remarkable stability of low domestic inflation in many countries requires explanation. In this paper, a number of competing hypotheses are evaluated on a stand-alone basis, and all are found to be inadequate. This includes the view that this outcome has been solely the result of more...