This paper evaluates the performance of Consensus Forecasts of real GDP growth for a large number of industrialized and developing countries for the time period October 1989 to December 1999. The questions addressed are the following: How accurate are private sector forecasts? How does their...

Many studies have attempted to uncover empirical regularities in how countries choose their exchange rate regimes. We survey previous studies showing that, taken as a whole, the literature is inconclusive. Drawing on a large dataset with many potential explanatory variables and a variety of...

Our paper analyses the effects of restrictions on capital mobility on the output-inflation tradeoff. Using a stochastic version of the Mundell-Fleming model, we establish a theoretical presumption that an increase in restrictions on capital mobility should make the tradeoff parameter smaller,...

This paper provides evidence on the importance of the credit channel in the transmission of monetary policy. Changes in reserve requirements are used to measure "credit shocks." Reserve requirement changes are often made for regulatory reasons, and hence provide a more exogenous measure of...

Using annual data for 450 manufacturing industries over the period 1958 to 1989, we establish the following stylized facts on the response of industry nominal wage growth to aggregate and industry influences: ; 1. We find support for the canonical wage contracts model outlined in Blanchard and...

In this paper, we document two empirical relationships that have emerged as the former communist countries have taken steps to transform their economies from command systems to market-based systems. First, increased central bank independence has tended to improve inflation performance. Second,...

This article examines the sources of fluctuations in Japanese and U.S. labor markets. Despite the differences in the structures of the two labor markets, the authors find that unemployment and vacancies respond similarly to aggregate shocks. However, different shocks appear to be important in...