The presence of a lower bound of zero on nominal interest rates has important implications for the conduct of optimal monetary policy. Standard rational expectations models can have alternative steady states as well as non-unique laws of motion, i.e. there can be possible sunspot equilibria....

The combination of discretionary monetary policy, labor-market distortions and nominal wage rigidity yields an inflation bias as monetary policy tries to exploit nominal wage contracts to address labour-market distortions Although an inflation target eliminates this inflation bias, it creates a...

Inflation targeting has emerged in recent years as a leading and increasingly advocated framework for conducting monetary policy in order to achieve and maintain price stability. Like many other developing countries, Egypt is now aspiring to introduce inflation targeting as a framework for its...

The fiscal policy environment central banks operate in can be radically different with respect to debt levels, maturity structures and whether or not fiscal adjustments are spending or tax based. Despite this, most analyses of monetary policy delegation schemes typically ignore the behavior of...

We analyze money financing of fiscal transfers (helicopter money) in two simple New Keynesian models: a "textbook" model in which all money is non-interest-bearing (e.g., all money is currency), and a more realistic model with interest-bearing reserves. In the textbook model with only...

Policy mix problems may arise in a monetary union with centralized monetary policy and decentralized fiscal policy. A consequence of this may be an inappropriate stabilization of shocks. This paper addresses how policy coordination problems are affected by the objectives of the monetary...

The purpose of this short paper is to show that inflation “band” targeting can solve the “time inconsistency” problem that exists under inflation “point” targeting by setting a relevant target range. Moreover, we show that inflation band targeting has the following two advantages,...

The presently tenuous situation in Turkey will worsen if the government does not take appropriate policy action. In view of foreign investors’ loss of confidence, the cost of external financing is likely to rise while consumption and investment will fall, and the Turkish lira would depreciate...

This paper reviews South Africa's monetary policy since 2007 and makes recommendations towards improving the inflation-targeting framework currently in place. Following a surge in inflation into double digits in 2007/08, the South African Reserve Bank managed to guide inflation in line with the...

Due to its official mandate, the European Central Bank (ECB) is assumed to maximize an implied objective function that leads it to pursue inflation with a subordinate focus on supporting the general economic policy of the European Union. This objective is - by its very nature - difficult to...