The remarkable stability of low domestic inflation in many countries requires explanation. In this paper, a number of competing hypotheses are evaluated on a stand-alone basis, and all are found to be inadequate. This includes the view that this outcome has been solely the result of more...

This paper studies a two country model with economies disaggregated into traded and non-traded sectors and in which investment goods as in practice are produced by combining inputsfrom all sectors. The model also accounts for nontraded distribution services employed in retail-ing traded goods to...

The surge in international asset trade since the early 1990s has lead to renewed interest in models with international portfolio choice, an aspect that was largely cast aside when the ad-hoc portfolio balance models of the 1970s were replaced bymodels of optimizing agents. We develop the...

This paper extends Galí and Gertler’s (1999) new hybrid KeynesianPhillips curve to the open economy context. We hypothesise that pricing decisionsdepend on both labour costs and intermediate imported input prices. The results forHong Kong are consistent with the theory if import prices are...

We study the effects of demographic shocks and changes in the pension system on themacroeconomic performance of an advanced small open economy. An overlappinggenerationsmodel is constructed which includes a realistic description of the mortalityprocess. Individual agents choose their optimal...

Using structural VARs, I find that external shocks are an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets. Furthermore, U.S. monetary policy shocks affect quickly and strongly interest rates and the exchange rate in a typical emerging market. The price level and real output in...

We decompose by origin the sources of the variation in real aggregate output and aggregate price level in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. We find that a sizable fraction of the variation is attributable to external shocks, especially so for aggregate price level. We show that euroarea...

In recent policy debates some have argued that expansionary monetarypolicy in Japan can increase real output in Japan and in Japans neighbors,while others have warned that it is a beggar-thy-neighbor policy. In this paper weestimate structural vector autoregressions to assess the effects of...

This paper analyzes the impact of limited enforceable international loanson international risk sharing and trade fluctuations in a two-country two-good endowment economy. Our specification of the punishment threat allowsthe exclusion from trade to last only finitely many periods and...

In this paper an index of financial competitiveness is calculated that corresponds to themarket-to-book ratio of inward FDI stocks. For a panel of five advanced economies from1980 to 2006 it is shown that price competitiveness, stable inflation rates and registeredpatents have a positive impact...