The inertia found in econometric estimates of interest rate rules is a continuing puzzle. Many reasons for it have been offered, though unsatisfactorily, and the issue remains open. In the empirical literature on interest rate rules, inertia in setting interest rates is typically modelled by...

It has been argued that delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank, which acts as an agent for the government, does not mitigate the problem of time-inconsistency, but merely relocates it. We argue here that this is not so, and that delegation enables a wider class of economies...

In this Paper we argue that the objectives given to the European Central Bank in the Maastricht Treaty are not well represented by the widely used weighted sum of squared deviations of inflation and output from target (plus possibly terms in squared changes in interest rates to pick up interest...

The inertia found in econometric estimates of interest rate rules is a continuing puzzle. Many reasons for it have been offered, though unsatisfactorily, and the issue remains open. In the empirical literature on interest rate rules, inertia in setting interest rates is typically modeled by...

Since late 2005, China’s two stock markets, in Shanghai (SSE) and Shenzhen (SZSE), have risen over 600% only to fall by close to 60% from a peak in late 2007. The race up and down is reflected in China’s macroeconomic indicators, but the real story lies with individuals investing in the...

...

We challenge recent findings by Abiad and Mody (2005) which suggest that financial liberalization has little to do with political variables. This analysis is at odds with some of the established literature, and only with difficulty comes to terms with the considerable cross-national variation in...