The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has highlighted the role of country risk premia as a link between countries' fiscal and external balances, financial conditions and monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to estimate how adoption of inflation targeting (IT) affects spreads. It is...

The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has highlighted the role of country risk premia as a link between countries' fiscal and external balances, financial conditions and monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to estimate how adoption of inflation targeting (IT) affects spreads. It is...

Many central banks target an inflation rate near two percent. This essay argues that policymakers would do better to target four percent inflation. A four percent target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic...

This paper investigates macroprudential policy effects on bank systemic risk and the role of inflation targeting in such effects. Using bank-level data for 45 countries comprising various monetary and exchange rate regimes, our regime-dependent dynamic panel regression results point to...

This paper estimates neutral real interest rate (NRIR) ranges for 10 Latin American countries that either have full-fledged inflation targeting regimes in place or have recently adopted them, using an array of methodologies commonly used in the literature. We find that NRIRs have declined in the...

This paper estimates neutral real interest rate (NRIR) ranges for 10 Latin American countries that either have full-fledged inflation targeting regimes in place or have recently adopted them, using an array of methodologies commonly used in the literature. We find that NRIRs have declined in the...

We study a wide range of hybrid inflation-targeting (IT) and managed exchange rate regimes, analyzing their implications for inflation, output and the exchange rate in the presence of various domestic and external shocks. To this end, we develop an open economy new-Keynesian model featuring...

Monetary policy in Yemen is largely rudimentary and ad hoc in nature. The Central Bank of Yemen's (CBY) approach has been based on discretionary targeting of broad money without any clear target to anchor inflation expectations. This paper argues in favor of a new formal monetary policy...

Transparency is a central element in most aspects of the design and operation of inflation targeting regimes. This paper focuses on three elements of inflation targeting most closely associated with transparency: (i) the institutional arrangements supporting inflation targeting' (ii) the...

This paper describes the CNB's experience implementing an inflation-forecast targeting (IFT) regime, and the building of a system for providing the economic information that policymakers need to implement IFT. The CNB's experience has been very successful in establishing confidence in monetary...