Much of the information communicated by central banks is noisy or imperfect. This paper considers the potential benefits and limitations of central bank communications in a model of imperfect knowledge and learning. It is shown that the value of communicating imperfect information is ambiguous....

This paper estimates the path of inflation persistence in the United States over the last 50 years and draws implications about the evolution of the Federal Reserve's monetary-policy preferences. Standard models of central bank optimization predict that the central bank's preference for output...

The informational value of the aggregate US unemployment rate has recently been questioned because of a unit root in the labor-force participation rate; the lack of mean reversion implies that long-run changes in unemployment rates are highly unlikely to reflect long-run changes in joblessness....

This paper investigates if conclusions regarding labour market hysteresis differ depending on whether employment or unemployment rates are studied. Applying a range of unit-root tests to monthly data from Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S., we find results for...

Economic theory suggests that variations in countries’ age structure should affect the economy on an aggregate level. This paper investigates the relationship between age structure and GDP in 20 OECD countries using annual data from 1970 to 1999. Using new methodology, the relationship between...

This paper contributes to the recent debate about the estimated high partial adjustment coefficient in dynamic Taylor rules, commonly interpreted as deliberate interest rate smoothing on the part of the monetary authority. We argue that a high coefficient on the lagged interest rate term may be...

Within a decision-making group, such as the monetary-policy committee of a central bank,group members often hold differing views about the future of key economic variables. Such differences of opinion can be thought of as reflecting differing sets of judgement. This paper suggests modelling each...

Theory predicts that life cycle saving mechanisms will cause real exchange rate variations as the age structure varies. We investigate the impact of demography on the Swedish real exchange rate, measured as the real TCW index, during 1960 to 2000. Time series regressions show that the Swedish...

When dealing with time series that are integrated of order one, the concept of cointegration becomes crucial for the specification of a model. Using the best available tests, one can reduce the probability of estimating econometric models that are misspecified. This paper investigates the small...

We use a mean-adjusted Bayesian VAR model as an out-of-sample forecasting tool to test whether money growth Granger-causes inflation in the euro area. Based on data from 1970 to 2006 and forecasting horizons of up to 12 quarters, there is surprisingly strong evidence that including money...