The main purpose of this paper is to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa. The analysis extracts the index by applying two alternative approaches (principal component analysis and Kalman filter), which identify an unobservable common factor from a group of external and...

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) in a dataset containing prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across a variety of U.S. metropolitan areas. Both the frequency and size of sales fall when local...

The paper investigates the non-performing loans (NPLs) in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE) in the period of 1998–2011. The paper finds that the level of NPLs can be attributed to both macroeconomic conditions and banks’ specific factors, though the latter set of factors was...

This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using a structural vector autoregressive model. The results indicate that the interest rate and bank lending channels are relatively effective in influencing...

Using recent advances in the classification of exchange rate regimes, this paper finds no support for the popular bipolar view that countries will tend over time to move to the polar extremes of free float or rigid peg. Rather, intermediate regimes have shown remarkable durability. The analysis...

This paper provides a quantitative exploration of international spillovers of macroeconomic shocks among the major industrial economies. The particular topical example analyzed here concerns the possible effects on the industrial economies of adverse shocks to the current U.S. economic...

This paper asks whether inflation targeting improves economic performance, as measured by the behavior of inflation, output, and interest rates. We compare 7 OECD countries that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s to 13 that did not. After the early 1990s, performance improved along...

This paper uses vector autoregressions and impulse-response functions to construct a U.S. financial conditions index (FCI). Credit availability—proxied by survey results on lending standards—is an important driver of the business cycle, accounting for over 20 percent of the typical...

The question of how India should adapt monetary policy to ongoing financial globalization has gained prominence with the recent surge in capital inflows. This paper documents the degree to which India has become financially globalized, both in absolute terms and relative to emerging and...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically determine the causes of worldwide diversity of inflation volatility. We show that higher degrees of political instability, ideological polarization, and political fragmentation are associated with higher inflation volatility.