The durable goods sector is much more interest sensitive than the non-durables sector, and these sectoral differences have important implications for monetary policy. In this paper, we perform VAR analysis of quarterly US data and find that a monetary policy innovation has a peak impact on...

This paper shows that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy. When the central bank enjoys only limited credibility a pegged exchange rate regime yields a...

Under inflation targeting inflation exhibits negative serial correlation in the United Kingdom, and little or no persistence in Canada, Sweden and New Zealand, and estimates of the indexation parameter in hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curves are either equal to zero, or very low, in all...

This paper examines the impact of downward wage rigidity (nominal and real) on optimal steady-state inflation. For this purpose, we extend the workhorse model of Erceg, Henderson and Levin (2000) by introducing asymmetric menu costs for wage setting. We estimate the key parameters by simulated...

This paper investigates whether the quantity theory of money is still alive. We demonstrate three insights. First, for countries with low inflation, the raw relationship between average inflation and the growth rate of money is tenuous at best. Second, the fit markedly improves, when correcting...

The possible short-run trade-off between the inflation (gap) and the output (gap) remains a critical policy issue for any emerging economy; particularly when an implicit or an explicit inflation targeting monetary policy is considered. The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) has recently set up...

In the Argentine hyperinflations of 1989 and 1990, quasi-fiscal deficits were a major part of the problem. The Central Bank's quasi-fiscal activities are financed directly by money printing but in some cases the monetary authority tries to sterilize the effect on the money supply by issuing debt...

In this paper I evaluate inflation targeting for ten countries. The evaluation is based on unconditional as well as conditional measures of the variance of inflation around target. With strict inflation targeting, expectations of the future deviation from target given information about the...

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether the switching to the Inflation Targeting (IT) regime is necessary for the Egyptian case or not? Our judgment of applying IT regime in the Egyptian economy is established on doubled criterion. That is, the practical experience of the...

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding on how inflation targets are set. For this reason, we first gather evidence from official central bank and government publications and from a questionnaire sent to central banks on how inflation targets are set; we then estimate the...