We propose a novel framework to gauge the credibility of central banks' commitment to an inflation-targeting regime. Our framework combines survey data on macroeconomic forecasts with high-frequency financial market data to understand how inflation targeting makes economic agents change their...

This paper investigates the performance of early warning systems in real-time, using forecasts of indicators that were available at the moment predictions are to be made. The study analyzes currency crises in eight Latin American and Central and Eastern European countries, distinguishing an...

In macroeconomic models, the level of price dispersion - which is typically approximated through its relationship with inflation - is a central determinant of welfare, the cost of business cycles, the optimal rate of inflation, and the tradeoff between inflation and output stability. While the...

We study the dynamics of inflation persistence in 45 countries for the period 1960-2008. We use a nonparametric unit root test robust to nonlinearities, error distributions, structural breaks and outliers, many of them typical features of inflation data, and a test for multiple changes in...

This paper attempts to identify how monetary policy shocks affect stock prices by using Mundell and Fleming's theory of the Impossible Trinity. According to this theory, it is impossible to simultaneously have a fixed exchange rate, free capital movement (an absence of capital controls), and an...

In this study, we measure the central bank independence for all fourteen ESCWA countries using two indicators: the legal independence and accountability measure (the de jure measure) and the turnover rates of central bank governors (the de facto measure). The entire sample of countries is split...

In this paper, I examine whether communications by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) play a role in determining the types of macroeconomic news that financial markets pay attention to. To do so, I construct novel measures of the intensity with which FOMC statements and meeting minutes...

Would a more open and regular evaluation of the monetary policy framework improve policy in the United States? Even when considering a relatively short timeframe that spans the 1960s to the present, it is possible to point to many significant changes to the framework. Some of the changes were...

This paper evaluates the influence of central bank's projections and narrative signals provided in the summaries of its Inflation Report on the expectations of professional forecasters for inflation and GDP growth in the case of Mexico. We use the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model, a textmining...

This work is based on a new Keynesian theoretical model for an advanced economy, which incorporates overlapping generations to analyze a channel through which fluctuations in household financial wealth influence aggregate demand. The optimal monetary policy, corresponding to that of a central...