In closed or open economy models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We analyze this result in the context of developing economies, where a large proportion of households are credit constrained...

This paper explores the effect of U.S. unconventional monetary policy (QE2) on a group of frontier developing economies (FDEs) in Asia. This paper finds that spillovers emanating from the U.S. on FDEs in Asia have been small. The relative insulation of emerging Asia from the global financial...

We develop a semi-structural new-Keynesian open-economy model, with separate food and non-food inflation dynamics, for forecasting and monetary policy analysis in low-income countries and apply it to Kenya. We use the model to run several policy-relevant exercises. First, we filter international...

We develop a DSGE model with a banking sector to analyze the impact of the financial crisis on Zambia and the role of the monetary policy response. We view the crisis as a combination of three related shocks: a worsening in the terms of the trade, an increase in the country's risk premium, and a...

The degree of an economy's monetization, which has an important implication on economic growth, can be affected by the conduct of monetary policy, financial sector reform, and episodes of financial crises. The paper finds that monetization -- measured by the ratio of broad money to nominal GDP...

Central banks in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) have been modernizing their monetary policy frameworks, often moving toward inflation targeting (IT). However, questions regarding the strength of monetary policy transmission from interest rates to inflation and output have often...

Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

VAR methods suggest that the monetary transmission mechanism may be weak and unreliable in low-income countries (LICs). But are structural VARs identified via short-run restrictions capable of detecting a transmission mechanism when one exists, under research conditions typical of these...

We examine the strength of monetary transmission in India, using a conventional structural VAR methodology. We find that a tightening of monetary policy is associated with a significant increase in bank lending rates and conventional effects on the exchange rate, though pass-through to lending...

We introduce subsistence requirements in food consumption into a simple new-Keynesianmodel with flexible food and sticky non-food prices. We study how the endogenous structuraltransformation that results from subsistence affects the dynamics of the economy, the design ofmonetary policy, and the...