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...

This paper focuses on the issue of the information asymmetry between the Federal Reserve Bank and commercial forecasters. Previous theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that in the absence of confidential supervisory information, commercial forecasters either under- or over- predict future...

The present paper presents a quarterly econometric model for the Greek economy, the GR-MCM model. The model has been developed as part of a larger project within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), the Multi-Country Model (MCM). The model combines short-run Keynesian dynamics determined...

When inflation picks up, central banks are most concerned that the de-anchoring of inflation expectations and the ignition of wage-price spirals will trigger inflation dynamic instability. However, such scenarios do not materialize in the standard New Keynesian theoretical framework for monetary...

The Fed has never admitted targeting stock prices. Yet our empirical analysis, based on a small macro-econometric model of the U.S. economy in the period 1981-2002, shows that the Fed explicitly takes into account stock price variations in its reaction function. Furthermore, our simulation...

We analyze welfare maximizing monetary policy in a dynamic two-country model with price stickiness and imperfect competition. In this context, a typical terms of trade externality affects policy interaction between independent monetary authorities. Unlike the existing literature, we remain...

The international welfare effects of a country's monetary policy shocks have been controversial in the new open economy macro (i.e., NOEM) literature. While a unilateral monetary expansion increases the production efficiency in each country, it affects the terms of trade in favor of one country...

We study the effects on the optimal monetary policy design problem of allowing for deviations from the law of one price in import goods prices. We reach three basic results. First, incomplete pass-through renders the analysis of monetary policy of an open economy fundamentally different from the...

This paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal fiscal and monetary policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk...

This paper contains a set of estimates of reaction functions for the euro area based on a monthly data set starting in 1985. The main aim is to assess the performance of Taylor rules and to evaluate whether alternative specifications based, inter alia, on the inclusionc of additional variables...