This paper addresses the question of why inflation has not yet converged to price stability in Central America and the Dominican Republic and is currently relatively high by Latin American standards. It suggests that despite the institutional strengthening of monetary policy, important flaws...

Monetary policy in Yemen is largely rudimentary and ad hoc in nature. The Central Bank of Yemen''s (CBY) approach has been based on discretionary targeting of broad money without any clear target to anchor inflation expectations. This paper argues in favor of a new formal monetary policy...

This paper examines the relationship between monetary policy and oil prices within a world oil demand and supply model. Low price and high income elasticities of demand and rigid supply explain high price volatilities and producers'' market power. Exchange and interest rates do influence oil...

This paper examines the impact of a monetary policy shock on output, prices, and the nominal effective exchange rate for Kenya using data during 1997–2005. Based on techniques commonly used in the vector autoregression literature, the main results suggest that an exogenous increase in the...

A central bank must decide on the frequency with which it will conduct open market operations and the variability in short-term money market that it will allow. It is shown how the optimal operating procedure balances the value of attaining an immediate target and broadcasting the central...

Central Banks should enjoy a fair degree of autonomy in pursuing price stability to promote long-run growth and prosperity. This volume, edited by Patrick Downes and Reza Vaez-Zadeh, contains the papers presented at the fifth IMF seminar on central banking issues in November 1990. The theme was...

This paper examines monetary transmission in Jordan using the vector autoregressive approach. We find that the real 3-month CD rate, the Central Bank''s operating target, affects bank retail rates and that monetary policy, measured by the spread between the 3-month CD rate and the U.S. Federal...

This paper draws attention to inconsistencies in estimating simple monetary policy rules and their implications for policy advice. We simulate a macroeconomic model with a backward reaction function similar to Taylor (1993). We estimate different versions of a policy rule, using these simulated...