In this paper, we study the effectiveness of monetary policy in a severe recession and deflation when nominal interest rates are bounded at zero. We compare two alternative proposals for ameliorating the effect of the zero bound: an exchange-rate peg and price-level targeting. We conduct this...

In this paper we estimate a small model of the euro area to be used as a laboratory for evaluating the performance of alternative monetary policy strategies. We start with the relationship between output and inflation and investigate the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to Taylor...

The Walters critique of EMU presumed that pro-cyclical country-specific real interest rates would incorporate significant macroeconomic instability in an environment of asymmetric shocks. The literature on optimum currency areas suggests a number of criteria to minimize this risk, such as market...

This paper uses the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) to examine monetary policy of the Mexican Central Bank in the framework of standard assumption of neoclassical orthodoxy for the years 2000-2011. This research presents empirical evidence that Mexican monetary authorities reacted, in...

We study a flexible price IS/LM economy in which the money supply and interest rate play the role of monetary policy instruments. If the central bank sets the nominal interest rate, the ambiguity in the price level is manifested. However, the equilibrium price level is permissible, if the...

In economics in situations where there is uncertainty one has to attribute some attitude to handling this uncertainty to individuals. The original idea was to assume that “people do not make systematic mistakes” for which Muth coined the term “rational expectations”. This was replaced by...

The academic literature has focused largely on testing for long-run fiscal sustainability. In this exercise we formulate a flexible regression model that can be used to assess the sustainability of a more recent build-up of fiscal deficits and debt that would be of major concern to policy...

European and the US mobile communication services markets have developed in rather different ways. There are striking differences in termination regulation and retail pricing models and one may wonder why this occurred and whether either of the markets outperforms the other in terms of...

This paper provides the algebra and a panel diagram to attempt to examine the so-called inflation- unemployment (or Phillips curve, or aggregate supply) example, the most popular example in the literature when introducing the concept of “time inconsistency” or “dynamic inconsistency”....

Modern principles of economics textbooks do an admirable job of teaching students to think like economists, but have unfortunately lagged behind the modern discipline in their inclusion of statistical, data-driven analysis. Many traditional presentations of ideas in principles textbooks would...