Societies often rely on simple rules to restrict the size and behavior of governments. When fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by a discretionary and profligate government, I find that revenue ceilings vastly outperform debt, deficit and monetary rules, both in effectiveness at curbing...

This paper introduces a novel monetary policy framework where the exchange rate becomes the central instrument. Using Singapore as a case study, it explores the Monetary Authority's adoption of the exchange rate as the primary tool since 1981, diverging from conventional approaches centered on...

In this paper, we analyze coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within the EMU by focusing, in a dynamic set-up, on asymmetries, externalities, and the existence of a multi-country context. We study how coalitions among fiscal and monetary authorities are formed and what are their...

Estimation of conventional Taylor rules for Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru shows that central banks increase their repo rate in response to increases in the output gap and, except in Peru, to deviations of inflation expectations from target. Using a Markov-Switching methodology, it is found...

After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the...

This paper investigates how institutional constraints discipline the behavior of discretionary governments subject to an expenditure bias. The focus is on constraints implemented in actual economies: monetary policy targets, limits on the deficit and debt ceilings. For a variety of aggregate...

New Keynesian models of monetary policy predict no role for monetary aggregates, in the sense that the level of output, prices, and interest rates can be determined without knowledge of the quantity of money. This paper evaluates the empirical validity of this prediction by studying the effects...

This paper employs a Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) consistent shadow-rate model to decompose UK nominal yields into expectation and term premia components. Compared to a standard affine term structure model, it performs relatively better in a ZLB setting and effectively captures the countercyclical...

The paper reviews the calculation of Indian wholesale and consumer price indices and suggests improvements in the light of past experience and international best practices. It confirms that food inflation has been the driver of domestic inflation. The paper studies the recommendations of the...

We review macroeconomic performance over the period since the Global Financial Crisis and the challenges in the pursuit of the Federal Reserve's dual mandate. We characterize the use of forward guidance and balance sheet policies after the federal funds rate reached the effective lower bound. We...