We propose a new approach to test the full-information rational expectations hypothesis which can identify whether rejections of the arise from information rigidities. This approach quantifies the economic significance of departures from the and the underlying degree of information rigidity....

To estimate the New Keynesian model, we use four key macroeconomic series for Thailand. The priors are chosen to reflect general considerations of the appropriate model dynamics and our judgment about the Thai economy. The model is solved initially so that the baseline forecast replicates staff...

This Selected Issues paper on the Russian Federation underlies inflation persistence and evolution in response to structural shocks. Inflation in Russia has been characterized by a considerable degree of persistence. An explicit inflation-targeting framework may help reduce firms’...

This selected issues paper on Indonesia was prepared by a staff team of the International Monetary Fund as background documentation for the periodic consultation with the member country. It is based on the information available at the time it was completed on August 21, 2012. The views expressed...

This Selected Issues paper on Ghana shows that as a small, open low-income economy, the country faces several major challenges in its conduct of disinflation policy. Ghana has historically experienced volatile and often high inflation rates. The paper also presents a model that recognizes...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the impact of globalization on United Kingdom’s inflation and relative prices over the last decade. The IMF’s Global Economy Model (GEM) is used to estimate the relative importance of the various factors argued to have influenced the evolution of...

The efficient aggregation of information is a prerequisite for the operation of a democratic system. In order for political office-holders to act responsively so that policy outcomes reflect public sentiments, sufficient levels of information about their actions must be aggregated within the...

This paper investigates the nature of the academic field of finance as it looks in the early 21st century. Using Kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions as a framework, the paper examines the development of the field over the last 50 years with particular emphasis on intellectual...

Christopher Sims is one of the leaders in time-series econometrics and empirical macroeconomics and is well known for introducing the VAR approach to econometrics and macroeconomic modelling. Sims' main contribution to empirical macroeconomics was to show how macro-econometric modeling should be...

The banking crisis has caused a resurgence of interest in behavioural models of expectations in macroeconomics. Here we evaluate behavioural and rational expectations econometrically in a New Keynesian framework, using US post-war data and the method of indirect inference. We find that after...