This paper looks at the history of money and its modern form from a scientific and mathematical point of view. The approach here is to emphasize simplicity. A straightforward model and algebraic formula for a large economy analogous to the ideal gas law of thermodynamics is proposed. It may be...

We calculate an "enlarged" Phillips curve for a theoretical EMU with 12+8 Member States. Both the empirical evidence and the econometric analysis show the worsening of the trade-off between inflation and unemployment, and hence the need to revise, at least temporarily, the stance of the ECB...

Recent empirical results about the US term structure are difficult to reconcile with the classical hypothesis of rational expectations even if time-varying but stationary term premia are allowed for. A hypothesis of rational learning about the conditional variance of the log pricing kernel is...

In this paper we estimate simple Taylor rules paying a particular attention to interest rate smoothing. Following English, Nelson, and Sack (2002), we employ a model in first differences to gain some insights on the presence and significance of the degree of partial ad- justment. Moreover, we...

This paper presents new evidence on the dynamics of dollarization and euroization for twenty-five transition countries. Estimates of the amount of foreign currency in circulation (FCC) in transition countries are used to develop a new comprehensive dollarization index (CDI) and separate indices...

El corto es un instrumento de política monetaria que utiliza el Banco de México para abatir la inflación. El corto ha sido un instrumento muy útil para Banco de México en la conducción de la política monetaria, porque ha permitido que los choques a los mercados se distribuyan y se...

Cross-country evidence on inflation and income inequality suggests that they are positively correlated. I explore the hypothesis that this correlation is the outcome of a distributional conflict underlying the determination of fiscal policy.

We describe a class of monetary economies that generate persistent episodes of high and low inflation. In this class of economies, variations in expectations can lead private agents to take actions which then make it optimal for the monetary authority to validate those expectations. We think...

The determinants of money velocity are explored under various assumptions on interest rate uncertainty in a monetary general equilibrium model. It is found that the appearance of velocity function instability can be produced by overlooking interest rate stochastic volatility. In addition, when...

This paper studies the structure and time consistency of optimal monetary policy from a public finance perspective in an economy where agents differ in preference for liquidity and holdings of nominal assets. I find that the presence of distributional effects breaks the link between time...