Do financial frictions call for policy cooperation? This paper investigates the implications of financial frictions for monetary policy in the open economy. Welfare analysis shows that there are long-run gains which result from cooperation, but, dynamically, financial frictions per se do not...

It is well-known that there is a large degree of uncertainty around Rogoff's (1996) consensus half-life of the real exchange rate. To obtain a more efficient estimator, we develop a system method that combines the Taylor rule and a standard exchange rate model to estimate half-lives. Further, we...

Recent studies document the deteriorating performance of forecasting models during the Great Moderation, which conversely implies that forecastability was higher in the preceding era when the economy was unexpectedly volatile. We explain this phenomenon in the context of equilibrium...

We consider the fiscal multiplier and spillover in an environment in which two countries are caught simultaneously in a liquidity trap. Using a standard New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model, an optimizing two-country sticky price model, we show that the fiscal multiplier and spillover...

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...