This paper analyzes how imperfect exchange rate pass-through affects the transmission of the CPI inflation targeting optimal monetary policy. In the short run, delayed pass-through constraints monetary policy more than incomplete pass-through and interest rate smoothing amplifies this effect. In...

In December 1997, the Czech Republic became the first transitional economy to adopt an inflation-targeting (IT) framework. This paper addresses two important topics: optimal inflation-targeting horizon and optimal speed of disinflation. A small, aggregate, forward-looking model of the Czech...

This paper assesses the ECB’s performance, which the author finds to be seriously lacking but which is of paramount importance to understanding euroland’s ongoing stagnation and fragility. A main finding is that the series of policy blunders which characterized the bank’s conduct features...

In this paper we analyse the potential for lending booms in three biggest new EU member states (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) during the process of Euro adoption. Experience of old members (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) as well as econometric evidence speak in favour of strong increases in...

Argentina’s money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. The banking sector was awash with bad assets that built up in the 1920s. Gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929, even before the crisis seriously damaged the core economies. Commonly, these events are seen...

Challenging the conventional wisdom that structural problems are to blame for the euro area’s protracted domestic demand stagnation, this paper sets out to shed some fresh light on the role of the ECB in the ongoing EMU crisis. Contrary to the widely held interpretation of the ECB as an...

Most prices and interest rates display fluctuating levels that embody extractable energy and equivalent amounts of money. Such fluctuations are also associated with varying degrees of uncertainty. Shannon's derivations of spectral entropy and information content offer computational techniques...

This study proposes the adoption of money growth rules as indicator variables of monetary policies by the countries converging to a common currency system, in particular, by the eurozone candidate countries. The analytical framework assumes an inflation target as the ultimate policy goal. The...

A flexible approach to direct inflation targeting is a viable monetary policy choice for transition economies that is believed to facilitate both the economic transition and the monetary convergence to the euro. Following this assumption, an analytical model investigating the link between the...

This study examines the link between various monetary policy regimes and the ability to manage inflation and exchange rate risk premiums in the EU candidate countries as they undergo monetary convergence to the eurozone. The underlying hypothesis is that a system of 'flexible inflation...