We propose a new approach to test the full-information rational expectations hypothesis which can identify whether rejections of the null arise from information rigidities. This approach quantifies the economic significance of departures from the null and the underlying degree of information...

The impact of fiscal stimulus depends not only on short-term tax and spending policies, but also on expectations about offsetting measures in the future. This paper analyzes the effects of an increase in government spending under a plausible debt-stabilizing policy that links current stimulus to...

The financial crisis that began in 2007 has brought to the fore the issues of excesses in lending, leverage, and risk-taking as some of the fundamental causes of this crisis. At the same time, in dealing with the financial crisis there have been large scale interventions by governments, often...

This paper examines the determinants of inflation in Sierra Leone using a structural vector autoregression (VAR) approach to help forecast inflation for operational purposes. Despite data limitations, the paper accurately models inflation in Sierra Leone. As economic theory predicts, domestic...

The effects of taxation on the general price level have traditionally been regarded as reflecting monetary policy, rather than fiscal factors. This view abstracted from the possible endogeneity of monetary expansion with respect to tax hikes, and from the effects which taxation may have on the...

We develop a optimal rules-based interpretation of the 'three pillars macroeconomic policy framework': a combination of a freely floating exchange rate, an explicit target for inflation, and a mechanism than ensures a stable government debt-GDP ratio around a specified long run. We show how such...

This is the second of a series of papers that are being written as part of a larger project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In this paper, we estimate a small...

This paper evaluates the proposal that government authorities ought to target nominal income. It begins by viewing the literature in some detail. It then undertakes a theoretical analysis of the proposal first for the small country and next for the large country. There is then a general...

Exchange rate-based inflation stabilization (ERBS) policies are associated with a boom-recession cycle in economic activity and sustained real exchange rate appreciation. A class of models in the literature has explained these empirical regularities with the lack of credibility of the...

The weakness of the euro has been surprising given the widely-held expectation that it would be a strong currency. This paper critically examines explanations for the slide in the euro, finding that many are questionable on conceptual or empirical grounds. Two explanations are instead advanced...