Despite convergence pressures, differences in housing and financial market institutions across the 15 member states of the European Union are still enormous. This paper argues that they have profound effects on the responsiveness of output and inflation in the different countries to changes in...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. This paper exploits liquid and illiquid wealth time series from household balance sheet data for South Africa, previously constructed by the authors, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of consumption...

The consumption behaviour of UK, US and Japanese households is examined and compared using a modern Ando-Modigliani style consumption function. The models incorporate income growth expectations, income uncertainty, housing collateral and other credit effects. These models therefore capture...

In common with many emerging market countries, South Africa’s government does not publish balance sheet wealth estimates on a market value basis, as produced in the US, UK, Japan, and elsewhere. Yet without information on the market values of liquid and illiquid personal sector wealth, it is...

This paper documents the role of consumption in explaining the weak interest rate effect of monetary transmission in Japan. Economic theory suggests circumstances in which a rise in short term real interest rates can increase consumption, contrary to much conventional wisdom. This paper suggests...

Changes in credit market architecture are an important but unobservable structural influence on economic activity. For Australian data, we model non-price credit supply conditions within equilibrium correction models of consumption, house prices, mortgage credit and housing equity withdrawal....

Inflation targeting central banks will be hampered without good models to assist them to be forward-looking. Many current inflation models fail to forecast turning points adequately, because they miss key underlying long-run influences. The world is on the cusp of a dramatic turning point in...

A sizeable literature examines exchange rate pass-through to disaggregated import prices but very few micro-studies focus on consumer prices. This paper explores exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices in South Africa during 2002-2007, using a unique data set of highly disaggregated data...

This paper examines the evolution of monetary policy in South Africa in 1994-2004 in terms of design, the operational framework, the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) understanding of monetary policy transmission and the transparency, credibility and predictability of monetary policy....

This paper presents new models for aggregate UK data on mortgage possessions (foreclosures) and mortgage arrears (payment delinquencies). The innovations include the treatment of difficult to observe variations in loan quality and shifts in forbearance policy by lenders, by common latent...