Since 1998 Hong Kong has experienced over 16 quarters of deflation. Some asset prices such as factory and office space prices started to fall in early 1990s, a long time before the Asian crisis. The number of firms and businesses that have moved out of Hong Kong are not readily available, but it...

Some observers have worried that under or over-estimating the output gap may unnecessarily induce tightening or loosening of monetary conditions, causing real fluctuations. To investigate the relationship between the output gap and inflation, we examine models of inflation that do and do not use...

New Zealand data show that the inflation-output relationship is asymmetric. This asymmetry implies that positive demand shocks tend to increase inflation by more than negative demand shocks of similar magnitudes reduce it. An important implication of this asymmetry is that a monetary authority...