During the 1970s and early 1980s, Spain suffered high rates of inflation but inflation declined and by 1997 inflation had fallen to approximately 2 percent. To fight inflation, Spain implemented austere monetary programs, joined the EMS in 1989, enacted central bank autonomy in 1994, and...

This paper explores the empirical relevance of arguments based on lack of credibility for explaining high ex post real interest rates afetr stabilization programs were implemented in Argentina, Israel, and Mexico in the mid-1980s.

This paper tests two hypotheses for the overbidding behavior of the banks in the fixed rate tenders conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB) from January 1999 until June 2000. One hypothesis attributes the overbidding to the expectations of a future tightening of monetary policy, while the...

The potential negative consequences of high financial volatility have been an important concern recently. Although its empirical relevance has not been proved conclusively, clear theoretic and intuitive arguments justify this concern. Many efforts have been conducted, therefore, to determine...

We construct a model to nalyze the two types of tender procedures used by the European Central Bank in its open market operations. We assume that the ECB minimizes the expected value of a loss function that depends on the quadratic difference between the interbank rate and a target interest rate...