Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as 'hysteresis,' argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and...

This book examines the struggles of the Japanese economy over the last 30 years, analyzing in detail the formation of the huge economic bubble in the 1980s, its collapse at the beginning of the 1990s, and subsequent two decade long economic stagnation and chronic deflation, with the aim of...

Greece's economy symbolizes in many ways the Eurozone's economic problems and divergent interests as it amasses most of the economic disadvantages characterizing the Eurozone's economy itself. This book presents the economic and political challenges to Greece and the EU member states

Praise for the first edition: 'The new book by Michael Mitsopoulos and Theodore Pelagidis offers insightful analysis of the Greek drama. It makes fascinating reading and well demonstrates that the blame is widely shared.' André Sapir, University Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles,...

The G-20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI), which aimed at addressing the information needs that were revealed by the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, concluded its first phase and started a second phase (DGI-2) with the endorsement of G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in September...

This paper explores how monetary policy affects the real economy and its efficacy in promoting financial stability in a large low income country. This paper shows that monetary policy modestly impacts real economic activity and inflation via the bank lending and financial accelerator channels....

In distilling a vast literature spanning the rational---irrational divide, this paper offers reflections on why asset bubbles continue to threaten economic stability despite financial markets becoming more informationally-efficient, more complete, and more heavily influenced by sophisticated...

Comparing the performances of the Austral, Cruzado and Sheqel programs shows that the latent suggestion that a “heterodox” stabilization program can be implemented without tight fiscal discipline to support a restrictive monetary policy, though welcome in the politicial arena, is...

This paper discusses stabilization policy in the presence of bands for the exchange rate. The bands are modelled in a probabilistic sense: monetary policy has to be such as to keep the probability, that the exchange rate stays within the bands, above a certain threshold. In contrast to other...