This book, edited by J.B. Zulu, Ian S. McCarthy, Susana Almuiña, and Gabriel Sensenbrenner, presents the proceedings of the special Joint Meetings on Central Banking Technical Assistance held in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1994, and provides detailed information on important issues in central...

This paper presents and estimates a small open economy dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model (DSGE) for the Jordanian economy. The model features nominal and real rigidities, imperfect competition and habit formation in the consumer’s utility function. Oil imports are explicitly modeled...

The recent boom-and-bust cycle in housing prices has refreshed the debate on the drivers of housing cycles as well as the appropriate policy response. We analyze the case of Spain, where housing prices have soared since it joined the EMU. We present evidence based on a VAR model, and we...

We develop a model to analyze the macroeconomic effects of a scaling-up of aid and assess the implications of different policy responses. The model features key structural characteristics of low-income countries, including varying degrees of public investment efficiency and a learning-by-doing...

This paper highlights that central banks from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru (the LA5 countries) reaped the benefits of what they sowed in successfully weathering the global crisis. The adoption of far-reaching institutional, policy, and operational reforms during the last two decades...

As China''s economy becomes more market based and continues its rapid integration into the global economy, having an independent and effective monetary policy regime oriented to domestic objectives will become increasingly important. Employing modern principles of monetary policy in light of the...

Using the IMF''s Global Economic Model, calibrated to the European Union, the effects of reform in product and labor markets are quantified for both a large and a small euro area economy. When markups in these markets are reduced, there are sizable long-term gains in output and employment. Most...

This paper studies the optimal design of monetary policy in an optimizing two-country sticky price model. We suppose that the production sequence of final consumption goods stretches across both countries and is associated with vertical trade. Prices of final consumption goods are sticky in the...

This paper compares monetary policy of currency boards with that of the franc zone during the period 1956-2005. It concludes that monetary policy in the zone was more autonomous than under a currency board, even though both systems faced the same exchange rate constraint. So far, the contingency...

Zimbabwe''s failure to address continuing central bank quasi-fiscal losses has interfered with both monetary management and the independence and credibility of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). Realized quasi-fiscal losses are estimated to have amounted to about 75 percent of GDP in 2006....