In recent years a growing consensus has emerged for price stability as the overriding, long-run goal of monetary policy. However, despite this consensus, the following question still remains: how should monetary policy be conducted to achieve the price stability goal? This paper examines the...

In the first section the authors discuss the nature of cyclical features and the distinction between the traditional analysis of co-movement discussed in the business cycles literature and the more recent common cycles analysis. Section 2 examines the nature of the data used in the estimation...

The recent debate over monetary policy strategies concludes that monetary targeting in practice lead to very similar patterns of central bank behaviour. This raises the question why central banks insist on the strategies they use. In this paper, we develop an answer from political economy. After...

Inflation appears to be the macro-problem in Ghana for which no antidote has been found under the economic recovery programme. It is possible that either a wrong diagnosis has been made of the problem, or that certain factors within the economy are preventing inflation from staying within target...

One of the most significant economic developments of recent years in industrialized countries has been the increasing orientation of macroeconomic policies - and of monetary policies in particular - to achieving lower inflation rates. This has led to a move from low inflation to price stability...

Convergence in inflation rates may not imply a process of convergence in price levels. If this were the case in the European Union, small but consistent differences in inflation would lead to inevitable realignments and would end up in a set back of the inflation convergence process. For some...