In many poor countries, the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food, many of whom are relatively poor, while hurting net food consumers, many of whom are also relatively poor. The impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse, but the average...

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of crude oil price movements on two macro variables, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and the consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate, in three countries, the People's Republic of China (an emerging economy), Japan, and the United...

In closed or open economy models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We analyze this result in the context of developing economies, where a large proportion of households are credit constrained...