The United Kingdom is a highly open economy, and has a monetary policy strategy of targeting inflation in consumer prices. In this Paper, we look at the evidence from the UK on inflation behaviour, and examine the propositions from several theoretical models about inflation dynamics in an open...

The volatile data for inflation, output, and interest rates in the United Kingdom prior to the 1990s, and the relative macroeconomic stability associated with inflation targeting, provide a rich basis for discriminating between rival explanations for the outbreak of stagflation. We examine...

This Paper reviews the distinction between the timeless perspective and discretionary modes of monetary policymaking, the former representing rule-based policy as recently formalized by Woodford (1999b). In models with forward-looking expectations there is typically a second inefficiency from...

This Paper discusses criticisms of the IS-LM framework in the macroeconomic literature of the last 40 years, and how the modern optimizing version of IS-LM addresses those criticisms. It is argued that models that include the optimizing IS-LM specification are legitimate vehicles for dynamic...

This paper considers the Great Inflation of the 1970s in Japan and Germany. From 1975 onward these countries had low inflation relative to other large economies. Traditionally, this success is attributed to stronger discipline on the part of Japan and Germany’s monetary authorities - for...

The ‘new open-economy macroeconomics’ seeks to provide an improved basis for monetary and exchange-rate policy through the construction of open-economy models that feature rational expectations, optimizing agents, and slowly adjusting prices of goods. This Paper promotes an alternative...

In this Paper, we present a dynamic optimizing model that allows explicitly for imperfect substitutability between different financial assets. This is specified in a manner that captures Tobin’s (1969) view that an expansion of one asset’s supply affects both the yield on that asset and the...

This Paper examines some recent monetary policy debates, in light of commentary on those issues contained in some of the work of Milton Friedman. The specific aspect of Friedman’s work considered here is the commentary on monetary policy in his Newsweek magazine columns from 1966 to 1984. My...

In this Paper, we look at the role of money in a general framework that encompasses three competing environments: the New Keynesian model with separable utility and static money demand; the non-separable utility variant with habit formation; and the New Keynesian model modified to allow for...

Understanding the degree of measurement error in the estimates of the output gap available to policymakers in ‘real time’ is important both for the formulation of monetary policy and for the study of inflation behaviour. For the United Kingdom, no official output gap series was published for...