The paper studies the role of real exchange rates and exchange rate policies in explaining differences in the economic performance in the CFA franc countries, with their fixed exchange rate regime, and another group of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with more flexible arrangements....

This paper estimates the Balassa-Samuelson effects for 11 countries in central and eastern Europe on a disaggregated set of quarterly data covering the period from the mid-1990s to the first quarter of 2008. The Balassa-Samuelson effects are clearly present and explain around 24% of inflation...

The paper reviews the recent conduct of monetary policy and central banks' interest rate setting behaviour in emerging market economies. Using a standard open economy reaction function, we test whether central banks in emerging economies react to changes in inflation, output gaps and the...

A considerable amount of theoretical literature suggests that, contrary to the predictions of textbook analysis, exchange rate devaluations may be contractionary rather than expansionary. This hypothesis has also received considerable empirical support. However, prior statistical analyses of the...

This paper describes some experiments with the construction of relatively simple indices which summarise in a systematic and objective way information about emerging economies currently under pressure in financial markets and those vulnerable to such pressure in the future. A survey of the...

From an international perspective, the European rate of unemployment has been high and growing over the last one to two decades; against this background, the parallel rise in profit shares in a number of European countries seems to be at odds with expected economic behaviour.

This paper aims to explain differences in inflation between six central European economies - Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia - and the euro area in terms of differences in productivity growth between tradable and non-tradable sectors. The coverage of tradable...

Discussion of exchange rate policy in Asia would benefit from appropriate measures of exchange rates on a multilateral basis. The purpose of this paper is to refine the construction of the effective exchange rates (EERs) for Asian economies, to make allowances for the role of Hong Kong SAR as an...