Using Minsky (1986), this paper attempts to answer two questions: (1) How does policy affect real and nominal variables? and (2) How should monetary policy be conducted so as to improve the performance of the economy? Minsky asserted that rising interest rates, brought about by contractionary...

Many public policy decisions require analytical and empirical knowledge concerning the size, growth, causes and consequences of the ‘underground economy”. This paper seeks to clarify the meaning of underground activity, updates various discrepancy and fiscal estimates of its size and growth,...

We analyze the endogenous appearance of money substitutes, their interaction with outside money, and resulting distortions in the price system of an economy with large monopolies and wide-spread informal networks. The economy consists of productive, individually optimizing agents and less...

The paper exploits a unique panel, covering some 2,000 Italian manufacturing firms and 14 years of data on individual prices and individual interest rates paid on several types of debt, to address the question of the existence of a channel of transmission of monetary policy operating through the...

This paper asks to what extent the market prices in the future monetary policy decisions of the Czech National Bank (CNB), how this policy predictability has evolved over time, and whether the change in the central bank’s forecasting methodology in mid-2002 had any impact. Using a sample up to...

Liquidity traps occur when the natural nominal interest rate becomes negative. In a model with capital price dynamics explicitly considered, we find that shocks in the future can cause current and lasting liquidity traps. We propose that the central bank can prevent or fix liquidity traps by...

This paper empirically analyses the stability of the narrow money demand function (M1) in Turkey for the period 1950-2002. As part of the IMF-sponsored stabilisation programme, Turkey has been pursuing base money targets. To ascertain whether this policy framework satisfies the necessary...

Keynes (1936) said that shortage of money caused by hoarding or failure to invest led to unemployment, but Lucas (1972) said that money does not affect unemployment. The tables have now turned. Gani (2003) produced a model of indirect trade in which money is necessary as a means of payment....

The real effects of an imperfectly credible disinflation depend critically on the extent of price rigidity. Therefore, the study of how the policymaker's credibility affects the outcome of an announced disinflation should not be dissociated from the analysis of the determinants of the frequency...

This paper presents an estimated model with learning and provides evidence that learning can improve the fit of popular monetary DSGE models and endogenously generate realistic levels of persistence. The paper starts with an agnostic view, developing a model that nests learning and some of the...