While there have been numerous studies of inflation targeting in industrial countries, there has been much less analysis of the effects of inflation targeting in emerging market countries. Based on a new and detailed survey of 31 central banks, this paper shows that inflation targeting in...

Structural VAR and Structural VEC models were estimated for Chile and Colombia, aiming at identifying fiscal policy shocks in both countries between 1990 and 2005. The impulse responses obtained allow the calculation of a peso-for-peso ($/$) effect on output of a shock to public spending and to...

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for...

This paper analyzes Israel's recent inflation targeting policies and their role in the disinflation process in the 1990s. Special features of Israel underlying inflation targeting are: a high-inflation history; lack of consensus about the benefits from reducing inflation and thereby lack of full...

This paper evaluates the impact of non-monetary factors on inflation for a sample of 97 countries over the period 1975-2005. We complement and extend the existing literature in the following dimensions: (i) we assemble a comprehensive set of inflation determinants classified in 5 groups — high...

Supply shock effects comming from high import prices, such as the current oil price shock, are analyzed based on a dynamic semi-structural model calibrated for the Guatemalan economy. It is argued that a worldwide oil price increase affects domestic prices through a direct and an indirect...

Over the past decade, most Latin American countries have moved toward either extreme of floating rates or dollarization, in line with worldwide trends. In this paper, we evaluate the wisdom of those decisions and the choice of monetary regime more generally. We first evaluate the desirability of...

We evaluate the ability of a measure of external imbalances that combines the trade and the financial channels to forecast the real effective exchange rate for Chile. By making use of a quarterly database of external assets and liabilities for the period 1983 to 2005, and employing a recently...

Central banks must make policy decisions in the face of uncertainty based on imperfect and evolving knowledge about the economy. While few general results have emerged from the research on monetary policy in the face of uncertainty and learning, a key lesson is that neither uncertainty nor...

The inclusion of the agrarian sector in the North American Foreign Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has created controversy since the beginning of negotiations. Mexico’s official vision has been that free trade, as well as agricultural reforms initiated in the country in the late eighties would...