This paper classifies countries that define their monetary policy framework by an inflation target into full-fledged inflation targeters, eclectic inflation targeters and inflation targeting lite regimes. This classification is based on indicators of the clarity and credibility of the commitment...

Movements in global capital during the late 1990s and the greater emphasis on price stability led many countries to abandon fixed exchange rate regimes and to design institutions and monetary policies to achieve credibility in the goal of lowering inflation. Such recent developments have brought...

This paper provides an overview of statistical measurement issues relating to alternative measures of core inflation, and the criteria for choosing among them. The approaches to measurement considered include exclusion-based methods, imputation methods, limited influence estimators, reweighting,...

In the past decades, much work has been geared toward solving the problem of time inconsistency in monetary policy and analyzing the coordination problem between fiscal and monetary policy. This paper provides a review of the theoretical background to these theories, while also focusing on their...

We propose a theory to explain why, and under what circumstances, a politician gives up rent and delegates policy tasks to an independent agency. We apply this theory to monetary policy by extending a standard dynamic "New-Keynesian" stochastic general equilibrium model. This model gives a new...

This paper provides some practical advice on establishing initial conditions in support of an inflation-targeting monetary framework. These conditions are divided into four areas: a mandate in support of an inflation objective and accountability for achieving this objective; macroeconomic...

This paper proposes a quantitative assessment of the welfare effects arising from the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and an array of broader grouping among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Model simulations suggest that (i) participating in the CMA benefits all members; (ii)...

This paper relates the inflationary impact of commodity price shocks across countries to a broad range of structural characteristics and policy frameworks over the period 2001-2010, using several approaches. The analysis suggests that economies with higher food shares in CPI baskets, fuel...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix on Angola underlie monetary policy framework. Angola has adopted an anti-inflation policy that has led to a sharp decline in inflation. To institute a monetary policy framework, a nominal anchor or constraint on the value of domestic currency...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes trends in Tunisian inflation. It computes measures of core inflation, and develops a simple framework for forecasting inflation. The paper econometrically estimates the degree of exchange rate pass-through in Tunisia. The methodology relies on time series and...