Conjectures about inflation expectations are inextricably linked to our understanding of the relationship between the real and monetary sides of the economy; yet, direct empirical research on the matter has been scarce at best. This paper therefore examines the empirical properties of inflation...

Many central banks target an inflation rate near two percent. This essay argues that policymakers would do better to target four percent inflation. A four percent target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic...

Using a model of island economy where financial markets aggregate dispersed information of the public, we analyze how two-way communication between the central bank and the public affects inflation dynamics. When inflation target is observable and credible to the public, markets provide the bank...

This paper analyses the major changes in both monetary and fiscal policy that have taken place over the past two decades and, within the limits of the existing empirical research, evaluates the overall costs and benefits for the OECD economies. The general findings for monetary policy are that,...

This paper analyses a hypothesis, whether an asymmetric monetary policy could contribute to the undershooting of the inflation targets of the Czech National Bank in the years 1998-2007. To this goal, a non-linear Taylor Rule has been estimated. The results indicate that – upon the...

This article addresses the role of the inflation target with respect to inflation expectations developments using the vector error correction (VECM) and block restriction vector autoregression (VAR) models, based on the monthly data of 1999-2007. The econometric analysis performed has not...

The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the single most important indicator of inflation used by the European Central Bank. Sections 2 to 4 of the paper look at the theory of inflation indexes that could be used as target indexes of inflation. A Consumer Price Index (CPI) emerges as...

Using a model of island economy where financial markets aggregate dispersed information of the public, we analyze how two-way communication between the central bank and the public affects inflation dynamics. When inflation target is observable and credible to the public, markets provide the bank...

Psychological factors are commonly believed to play a role on cyclical economic fluctuations, but they are typically omitted from state-of-the-art macroeconomic models. This paper introduces "sentiment" in a medium-scale DSGE model of the U.S. economy and tests the empirical contribution of...

This paper proposes a new econometric framework for estimating trend inflation and the slope of the Phillips curve with a regime-switching model. As a unique aspect of our approach, we assume regimes for the trend inflation at one-percent intervals, and estimate the probability of the trend...