Using data on long-term interest rates for 17 industrial countries, this paper develops some simple measures of monetary policy credibility and then tests if such measures improve the out-of-sample forecasts of conventional models of the inflation-unemployment process. The results provide some...

This paper appraises how countries with inflation targeting fared during the current crisis, with the goal of establishing the stylized facts that will guide and motivate future research. We find that since August 2008, IT countries lowered nominal policy rates by more and this loosening...

This paper constructs tests for the presence of nonlinearity of unknown form in addition to a fractionally integrated, long memory component in a time series process. The tests are based on artificial neural network structures and do not restrict the parametric form of the nonlinearity. The...

This is the sixth of a series of papers that are being written as part of a project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit to which economists have access for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In this...

This 2007 Article IV Consultation highlights that effective economic management and an outward-oriented development strategy have contributed to placing Tunisia’s economic performance over the past decade among the best in the region. Real GDP growth accelerated from 4 percent in 2005 to...

This paper develops and estimates a general equilibrium rational expectations model with search and multiple equilibria where aggregate shocks have a permanent effect on the unemployment rate. If agents' wealth decreases, the unemployment rate increases for a potentially indefinite period. This...

The paper examines the determinants of employment growth, drawing on data available across a sample of Caribbean countries. To that end, the paper analyzes estimates of the employment-output elasticity and the response of employment growth to major sources of labor market determinants, in the...

In the past decades several features of U.S. unemployment dynamics have been investigated empirically. The original focus of research was on the duration of unemployment. In later studies the cyclicality of incidence and duration, compositional effects and duration dependence of the exit rate...

We propose a monetary model in which the unemployed satisfy the official US definition of unemployment: they are people without jobs who are (i) currently making concrete efforts to find work and (ii) willing and able to work. In addition, our model has the property that people searching for...