This paper explores the empirical relevance of arguments based on lack of credibility for explaining high ex post real interest rates afetr stabilization programs were implemented in Argentina, Israel, and Mexico in the mid-1980s.

We show in this paper that capital controls are aloso a statistically significant explanatory variable of the output-inflation tradoff coefficient, and that they improve the sacrifice ratio. Consequently, capital controls can help explain the relatively small output losses in the recent...

Transparency and openness of the monetary policymaking process at the Bank of England has provided very detailed information on both the decisions of individual members of the Monetary Policy Committee and the information on which they are based. We consider this decision making process in the...

The assessment of inflationary pressures in Colombia has faced two important challenges in the present decade. The first one occurred in 2006 and consisted of detecting an overheating economy in the midst of fast growing investment and increasing measured productivity. The second challenge took...

This paper attempts to explain possible reasons and objectives behind the 35 trillion yen (7% of GDP) interventions conducted by the Japanese monetary authorities from January 2003 to March 2004, and to discuss whether the interventions achieved the presumed objectives: making the movement of...

This article analyzes the main issues for monetary policy in new EU member states before their euro adoption. These are typically rooted in the challenge of fulfilling concurrently of the Maastricht inflation and exchange rate criterion, as these countries are experiencing equilibrium real...

Good monetary policy requires estimates of all of its effects: monetary policy impacts traditional economic variables such as output, unemployment rates, and inflation. But does monetary policy influence crime rates? By extending the vector autoregression literature, we derive estimates of the...

Recent models of monetary policy have analyzed the desirability of di?erent optimal and ad hoc interest rules under the restrictive assumption that forecasts of the private sector and the central bank are homogenous. This paper studies the implications of heterogeneity in forecasting by the...