In India, there is a large divergence between CPI and WPI inflation trends in the past, wide dispersion in inflation across commodity groups within WPI, and significant volatility in headline WPI inflation under the influence of supply shocks, the statistical limitations of prices data have...

This paper considers optimal stabilization policy and nominal income targets for an open economy where the authorities are concerned both with unemployment and monetary instability. To fully achieve these two objectives the authorities must use both monetary and "supply-side" fiscal policy. It...

Why is that the achievements of some disinflations from low and moderate peaks are longlived, whereas in others the gains in the inflationary front dissipate quickly? Based on an index of the sustainability of disinflations proposed in the paper, various competing explanations of what determines...

In a simple open economy macromodel, calibrated to the typical institutions and shocks of a densely populated emerging market economy, it is shown that a monetary stimulus preceding a temporary supply shock can abort inflation at minimum output cost, since of the appreciation of exchange rates,...

This paper investigates the sources of the widely noticed reduction in the volatility of American business cycles since the mid 1980s. Our analysis of reduced volatility emphasizes the sharp decline in the standard deviation of changes in real GDP, of the output gap, and of the inflation rate....

We characterize the macroeconomic performance of a set of industrialized economies in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the 1970s and of the last decade, focusing on the differences across episodes. We examine four different hypotheses for the mild effects on inflation and economic...