Inflation rates in a number of OECD follow a common trend over the past four decades: inflation starts out low in the 1960s, rises for a time before peaking in the 1970s or early 1980s, and then falls back to initial levels. This similarity in the behavior of trend inflation suggests that any...

Since changes in import prices feed into consumer prices and thus might affect monetary policydecisions, policymakers need to establish whether or not German importers’ long-run pricingbehaviour has changed. Of particular interest are any shifts in the importance of cost passthroughand...

[...]In this article, we pursue a transaction-oriented line ofresearch to help track short-term exchange rate movements. Byexamining a publicly available data set well known to currencymarket analysts—net positions held by speculators in thefutures market—we are able to document a strong...

[...]This paper examines the recent recession, with particularattention given to developments in the labor market and in UI program financing. Its three objectives are to describedevelopments in the macroeconomy and in the labor marketthat have relevance for UI funding issues, to present...

[...]In this article, we attempt to quantify the economic effectsof the homeland security efforts of the public and privatesectors, focusing specifically on the costs of these efforts. Inpractice, it is difficult to classify which expenditures are relatedto homeland security. For this reason, we...

[...]In our view, this apparently surprising immunity of the U.S.economy to the Asia crisis reflects the fact that the original wayof thinking about the crisis was flawed. First, it focused only ondemand-side channels and ignored the supply side. Second, thedepreciation of the Asian currencies...

[...]In this article, we shed light on the globalizationof international production and trade by demonstratingthe increasingly important role vertical specializationplays in international trade. We use case studies andinput-output tables to calculate the level and growth...

In this paper we analyse the comparative pricing of vanilla and GDP linkedsovereign debt. The key feature of GDP linked bonds is that their cashflowscoupons,principal or both-are linked to the evolution of the country’s nationalincome. While it has long been argued that indexing debt to...

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent literature has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimizing the importance of the post-war shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than...