Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate inflation convergence within the East African Community (EAC) as it aspires to become a currency union. Design/methodology/approach – An unobserved dynamic factor model was used to decompose the variation in inflation into a component...

In the New-Keynesian model, optimal interest rate policy under uncertainty is formulated without reference to monetary aggregates as long as certain standard assumptions on the distributions of unobservables are satisfied. The model has been criticized for failing to explain common trends in...

This paper argues that ECB credibility in delivering price stability is being progressively eroded; this problem could be overcome by embracing greater transparency especially about the ECB's objectives, macroeconomic forecasts and decision-making. During the ECB's first decade, average...

This paper examines economic policy interactions in the Economic and Monetary Union when the assessment of cyclical conditions in real time is surrounded by uncertainty. On the basis of a simple stylised model it shows that different views about the output gap on the side of the policy players -...

Despite the fact that the correlation between policy rates in the U.S. and in the euro area has been low—at least over the past three decades—long term interest rates in the two regions have been highly correlated. More recently (since the early 1990s) their levels have also...

In the current New Keynesian literature, the role of monetary aggregates is generally neglected. Yet it’s hard to imagine money completely “passive” to the rest of the system. By entering real money balances in a non-separable utility function, we introduce an explicit role for money via...

Whether a central bank should share with the public its views about the future evolution of short term interest rates is an unresolved issue. Disclosing this information might allow a more precise control of market expectations and a more effective achievement of the ultimate goals of the...

This paper constructs a two-country DSGE model to study the nature of the recent financial crisis and its effects that spread immediately throughout the world owing to the globalization of banking. In the model, financial intermediaries (FIs) enter into chained credit contracts at home and...

Recent financial turmoil and existing empirical evidence suggest that adverse shocks to the financial intermediary (FI) sector cause substantial economic downturns. The quantitative significance of these shocks to the U.S. business cycle, however, has not received much attention up to now. To...

The financial sector is heavily regulated in order to prevent financial crises. The recent crisis showed how ineffective this regulation and other types of government intervention were in achieving this aim. We argue that the crisis was primarily caused by housing price bubbles. These occurred...