Following the fiscal stabilisation of 1926 and the accompanying return of the French franc to the Gold Standard, France enjoyed several years of fast growth and remained immune to the effects of the Great Depression until early 1931. Accounts of this period emphasize the undervaluation of the...

This paper analyses US–European policy interactions under different assumptions about the policy-making regime and the nature of the fiscal environment, contrasting the standard Keynesian case with an anti-Keynesian case in which government spending cuts are expansionary. When fiscal policy is...

Important questions concerning the structure and operation of a European Central Bank remain unanswered. Although there exists no precedent for the process of institution-building in which the European Community is currently engaged, the founding and early operations of the Federal Reserve...

Understanding the features and the determinants of individual price setting behaviour is important for the formulation of monetary policy. These behavioural mechanisms play a fundamental role in influencing the characteristics of aggregate inflation and in determining how monetary policy affects...

This paper investigates why the slope of the yield curve predicts future economic activity in Germany and the United States. A structural VAR is used to identify aggregate supply, aggregate demand, monetary policy and inflation scare shocks and to analyse their effects on the real, nominal and...

This Paper considers monetary and exchange rate policy in Korea since the financial crisis of 1997-98. The Bank of Korea has adopted much of the apparatus of inflation targeting, with a band for target inflation and a Monetary Policy Report to the National Assembly. This regime has served the...

This Paper reviews the controversy over China’s exchange rate regime. Placing the issue in the context of the literature on exit strategies, it argues that now is the best time for China to exit from its peg. Moving to a managed float would be in the country’s own interest; it would help the...

In this paper we compare the effects of monetary policy on output and prices in the G-7 countries using a parsimonious macroeconometric model comprising output, prices and a short-term interest rate. We identify monetary policy shocks by assuming that they do not affect real output...

This paper analyses the costs and benefits of European monetary unification. The benefits take the form of the reduction in exchange risk, equalization of interest rates, decline in relative price variability and general increase in economic efficiency likely to accompany unification. The costs...

The work presented in this paper falls into two parts. First, using a simple model and within the context of the central bank’s objective of price stability, it is shown that the optimal monetary response to unexpected changes in asset prices depends on how these changes affect the central...