Using both panel and cross-sectional models for 28 industrialized countries observed from 2001 to 2009, we report a number of findings regarding the determinants of the volatility of returns on cross-border asset holdings (i.e., equity and debt). Greater portfolio concentration and an increase...

We estimate a three-country model using 1995-2013 data for Germany, the Rest of the Euro Area (REA) and the Rest of the World (ROW) to analyze the determinants of Germany’s current account surplus after the launch of the Euro. The most important factors driving the German surplus were positive...

This paper studies the behavior of a central bank that seeks to conduct policy optimally while having imperfect credibility and harboring doubts about its model. Taking the Smets-Wouters model as the central bank’s approximating model, the paper’s main findings are as follows. First, a...

New Zealand's economic reforms beginning in 1984 have been one of the most radical and comprehensive programme of structural adjustment amojng OECD countries. This paper provides an empirical assessment of how New Zealand's production structure has changed since the early 1970s. The methodology...

The Black framework offers a theoretically appealing way to model the term structure and gauge the stance of monetary policy when the zero lower bound of interest rates becomes constraining, but it is time consuming to apply using standard numerical methods. I outline a faster Monte Carlo...

We propose that the formation of beliefs be treated as statistical hypothesis tests, and label such beliefs inferential expectations. If a belief is overturned through the build-up of evidence, we assume agents switch to the rational expectation. We build a state dependent Phillips curve, and...

Movements in commodity prices can have large effects on output and inflation. From both an academic and policy perspective, changes in commodity prices relative to the prices of services and manufactured goods pose a number of important questions. First, what are the fundamental processes or...

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representa- tions of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with...

Expanded public availability of U.S. banking data has prompted a need to reexamine end-of-quarter window dressing. We find substantial heterogeneity in the pattern of window dressing across banks and products, not all of which can be explained as customerinitiated, and some of which is...

In an influential paper, Engel and West (2005) claim that the near random-walk behavior of nominal exchange rates is an equilibrium outcome of a variant of present-value models when economic fundamentals follow exogenous first-order integrated processes and the discount factor approaches one....