The financial crisis proved strikingly that stabilizing the price level is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to ensure macroeconomic stability. The obvious candidate for addressing systemic risk is macroprudential policy. In this paper we study the optimal monetary and macroprudential...

Remittance inflows from overseas workers are an important source of foreign funding for developing and emerging economies. The literature is in- conclusive about the cyclical nature of remittance inflows. To the extent remittances are procyclical they pose a challenge to monetary policy: a...

This paper studies the determinants of business cycles in small open economies and adds to the discussion about the changing nature of inflation dynamics. We estimate a series of VAR models for a set of six Asian emerging market economies, in which we identify a battery of domestic and global...

Due to its official mandate, the European Central Bank (ECB) is assumed to maximize an implied objective function that leads it to pursue inflation with a subordinate focus on supporting the general economic policy of the European Union. This objective is - by its very nature - difficult to...

The adoption of a credible monetary policy regime such as inflation targeting is known to reduce the persistence of inflation fluctuations. This conclusion, however, is derived from aggregate inflation or sectoral inflation rates, not from regional inflation data. This paper studies the regional...

We revisit the sources of the bias in Federal Reserve forecasts and assess whether a precautionary motive can explain the forecast bias. In contrast to the existing literature, we use forecasts submitted by individual FOMC members to uncover members' implicit loss function. Our key finding is...

We estimate monetary policy reaction functions with threshold effects for the Deutsche Bundesbank using a real-time data set. Estimates based on the deviation of inflation from the Bundesbank's inflation target as threshold variable suggest a switch to a stronger output gap response in the...

In this paper we systematically evaluate how central banks respond to inflation deviations from target. We present a stylized New Keynesian model in which agents' inflation expectations are sensitive to inflation deviations from target. To (re-)establish credibility, optimal monetary policy...

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between certain characteristics of incumbent central bank governors and their interest-rate-setting behavior. We focus on (i) occupational backgrounds, (ii) party affiliation, and (iii) experience in office and estimate augmented Taylor rules for 20...

Monetary policy increasingly relies on steering market expectations about future policy. This paper identifies a monetary policy news shock based on a VAR model. A monetary news shock is equivalent to new information about the Fed's future monetary policy becoming available today. One example of...