This paper studies the importance of money for inflation in the euro area. An inflation equation is derived from a small model that combines the supply and demand for money with a Phillips curve and the assumption that inflation expectations develop adaptively. The model's solution attributes an...

We argue a source of time-varying premium (TVTP) in Japanese government bond market, and show that it is interest rate smoothing that causes empirical failures of expectation theory of term structure of interest rates. We estimate a regime switching ARCH model where an interest rate smoothing...

We investigate monetary-policy autonomy under different exchange-rate regimes in small, open European economies during the 1980s and 1990s. We find no systematic link between ex post monetary-policy autonomy and exchange rate regimes. This result is enforced for countries/periods with...

Over the last twenty years the level and volatility of inflation decreased across industrial countries. The inflation behaviour can be explained by a shift in monetary policy or by a lucky period of low volatility in business cycle shocks. To test theluck hypothesis we examine the inflation...

We estimate the Smets and Wouters (2007) model augmented with the Gertler and Karadi (2011) financial intermediation sector on US data by using real and financial observables. Given the framework of the estimated model, we address the question whether and how standard monetary policy should...

Over the last twenty years the level and volatility of inflation decreased across industrial countries. The inflation behaviour can be explained by a shift in monetary policy or by a lucky period of low volatility in business cycle shocks. To test the"luck hypothesis" we examine the inflation...

It is often argued that deregulation of international transactions and its effects on the globalization of financial markets is behind the decline in the attractiveness of fixed exchange rate regimes. We argue that, instead, much of the recently observed decrease in the level of capital controls...

The objective of this study is to examine recent developments in trade and FDI flows between the EU and the CEEC, trying to anticipate future consequences from the economic integration of the two blocks. Economic theory suggests that integration conveys positive effects upon welfare, due to the...

Such an exceptional event as the creation of the EMU and the euro has not had happened never before. The most common challenges concerning EMU and the euro are: fiscal policy making, monetary policy making, euro area being a non-optimal currency area and the political legitimacy of EMU. It is...

What is the probability of high inflation; how high, when? These questions are important to all investors since even the 2% level to which we are accustomed will cut an investor's portfolio by over 17% during a decade. This 2% level is the target of the Federal Reserve, along with near 0%...