Cross-country regressions explaining output growth often obtain a negative effect from inflation. However, that result is not robust, due to the selection of countries in sample, temporal aggregation, and omission of consequential variables in levels. This paper demonstrates some implications of...

We demonstrate the existence of a monetary policy tradeoff between price-inflation variability and output-gap variability in an optimizing-agent model with staggered nominal wage and price contracts. This variance tradeoff is absent only in the special case in which prices are sticky and wages...

Was the high inflation of the 1970s mostly due to incomplete information about the structure of the economy (an unavoidable mistake as suggested by Orphanides, 2000)? Or, to weak reaction to expected inflation and/or excessive policy activism that led to indeterminacies (a policy mistake, a...

If price levels are initially different across the euro area, convergence to a common level of prices would imply that inflation will be higher in countries where prices are initially low. Price level convergence thus provides a potential explanation for recent cross-country differences in...

Recent research suggests that the pass-through of exchange rate changes into domestic inflation has declined in many countries since the 1980s. We develop a theoretical model that attributes the change in pass-through (defined as the correlation of inflation with exchange rate changes) to...

This paper examines episodes of sudden large exchange rate depreciations (currency crashes) in industrial countries and characterizes the behavior of government bond yields during and after these crashes. The most important determinant of changes in bond yields appears to be inflationary...

This paper investigates the empirical relation between inflation and stock returns in ten industrialized countries, with a focus on the implications for links between inflation and the macroeconomy. The stock return decomposition of Campbell and Shiller (1988) is used to determine the extent to...

In a stylized DSGE model with an energy sector, the optimal policy response to an adverse energy supply shock implies a rise in core inflation, a larger rise in headline inflation, and a decline in wage inflation. The optimal policy is well-approximated by policies that stabilize the output gap,...

In light of 50 years of economic policies designed to integrate Europe -- culminating in the elimination of euro zone national currencies in early 2002 -- and a vast academic literature on international economic integration, it is of interest to assess how far European integration has come in...

In this paper Cagan's analysis of hyperinflations is adapted to look at sit­uations where the deficits to be financed by money creation are large and variable, but fiscal stabilisation is expected--features found in some of the republics of the Former Soviet Union soon after independence. The...