Over the last decades, hours worked per capita have declined substantially in many OECD economies. Using a neoclassical growth model with endogenous work-leisure choice, we assess the role of trend growth slowdown in accounting for the decline in hours worked. In the model, a permanent reduction...

The theoretical argument for central bank independence is based on the idea that even if the government represents people's preferences over inflation and output it has an incentive to renege from prearranged plans to gain a short run boost to output. This incentive leads to higher than desired...

This paper extends the Svensson inflation forecast targeting framework with a convex Phillips curve. An asymmetric target rule is derived, which implies a higher level of nominal interest rates than the Svensson forward-looking version of the reaction function popularised by Taylor. Extending...

There is a considerable academic literature on the relationship between Central Bank independence and inflation but the issue of Central Bank accountability and its effect of inflation performance has received very little attention. This paper looks at the issue of accountability in a simple...

The implications of uncertain policy preferences for the targeting and contracting approaches to monetary policy are investigated. It is shown that, in the presence of uncertain preferences, a linear incentive contract in the sense of Walsh performs better than an explicit inflation target as...

We argue that since there are several impediments to international risk sharing, the welfare gains from full international risk sharing, which have been the object of analysis in the previous literature, are not suggestive. Instead, we study the gains from feasible risk sharing and find that...

The paper builds a simplified model describing the economy of a currency union with decentralised national fiscal policy, where the main features characterising the policy-making are similar to those in EMU. National governments choose the size of deficit taking into account the two main rules...

The paper builds a simplified model describing the economy of a currency union with decentralised national fiscal policy, where the main features characterising the policy-making are similar to those in EMU. National governments choose the size of deficit taking into account the two main rules...

We argue that since there are several impediments to international risk sharing, the welfare fains from full international risk sharing, which have been the object of analysis in the previous literature, are not suggestive. Instead, we study the gains from feasible risk sharing and find that...

This paper reviews recent research on central bank independence (CBI). After we have distinguished between independence and conservativeness, the literature on optimal inflation contracts is discussed, followed by research in which the inflationary bias is endogenised. Finally, the various...