Conjectures about inflation expectations are inextricably linked to our understanding of the relationship between the real and monetary sides of the economy; yet, direct empirical research on the matter has been scarce at best. This paper therefore examines the empirical properties of inflation...

Recent research has shown that economic conditions have an important effect on real commodity prices. We quantify the contribution of fluctuations in inflation to this particular link. In the data, a temporary rise in inflation causes real commodity prices to rise, as does a rise in trend...

This paper estimates a series of shocks to hit the US economy during the Great Depression, using a New Keynesian model with unemployment and bargaining frictions. Shocks to long-run inflation expectations appear to account for much of the cyclical behavior of employment, while an increase in...

This paper shows that in inflation in industrialized countries is largely a global phenomenon. First, inflations of (22) OECD countries have a common factor that alone accounts for nearly 70% of their variance. This large variance share that is associated to Global Inflation is not only due to...

We identify the effects of the supply of mortgage credit on house prices, using the politicallydirected credit-targeting regime of Venezuela as quasi-natural experiment. We find a large effect of the supply of housing credit on time path of house prices (or housing Markups), with an elasticity...

In dieser Untersuchung wird der Frage nachgegangen, was die Konsensdebatte zur Erklärung von Entwicklungsunterschieden zwischen lateinamerikanischen und asiatischen Schwellenländern beitragen kann. Es lassen sich bei allen kritischen Politikfeldern wesentliche Unterschiede feststellen. Ein...

EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of ?close to balance or in surplus'. Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar­gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

This paper discusses alternative adjustment patterns in Bolivia over the last three decades using a SAM-based model that explicitly separates formal from informal activities, includes separate accumulation balance adjustments for different economic agents, differentiates closures by periods of...

Monetary policy rule parameters estimated with conventional estimation techniques can be severely biased if the estimation sample includes periods of low interest rates. Nominal interest rates cannot be negative, so that censored regression methods like Tobit estimation have to be used to...

Bolivia's macroeconomic performance in the period 1994 to 1998 is analyzed and compared with the performance in former periods and the performance of other developing countries (grouped according to income, region, and debt status). This allows to assess what has been achieved in Bolivia since...