Financial globalization has seen the emergence of a new monetary standard based on inflation targeting. At the same time the most financially advanced economies moved away from exchange rate targeting which also characterized the previous era of globalization - the era of the Classical Gold...

Forward interest rates have become popular indicators of inflation expectations. The usefulness of this indicator depends on the relative volatility and the correlation of inflation expectations and expected real interest rates. This paper studies US and UK data, using a range of different tools...

The paper establishes that sovereigns, like banks, need a lender of last resort (LoLR). In the euro area the ECB, with its estimated €3.4 trillion non-inflationary loss absorption capacity, is the only credible sovereign LoLR. The ECB/Eurosystem has been acting as sovereign LoLR through its...

Asset price inflation presents central banks with a puzzle. I examine the case of Germany, 1925-7, when the Reichsbank intervened to bring down stock prices, rectify imbalances and curb speculation. Present value relations, comparisons with historical valuation measures and the time-series...

This paper brings together two strands of the empirical macro literature: the reduced-form evidence that the yield spread helps in forecasting output and the structural evidence on the difficulties of estimating the effect of monetary policy on output in an intertemporal Euler equation. We show...

We investigate whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level can deliver a reasonable explanation for UK inflation in the 1970s, a period in which the government greatly increased public spending without raising taxes and monetary policy was accommodative. The model is tested for its implied...

This paper provides real time evidence on the usefulness of the euro area output gap as a leading indicator for inflation and growth. A genuine real-time data set for the euro area is used, including vintages of several alternative gap estimates. It turns out that, despite some difference across...

This paper provides evidence on the reliability of euro area real-time output gap estimates, including those provided by the IMF, OECD and EC and a set of model based measures. A genuine real-time data set is used, including vintages of several sets of euro area output gap estimates available...

Models for the twelve-month-ahead US rate of inflation, measured by the chain weighted consumer expenditure deflator, are estimated for 1974-99 and subsequent pseudo out-of-sample forecasting performance is examined. Alternative forecasting approaches for different information sets are compared...

This paper investigates the accuracy and heterogeneity of output growth and inflation forecasts during the current and the four preceding NBER-dated U.S. recessions. We generate forecasts from six different models of the U.S. economy and compare them to professional forecasts from the Federal...