With Spain’s official unemployment rate at 26 percent, and the economy projected to contract by 1.3 percent this year, it is difficult to make the case for continued austerity that could push a barely growing economy back into recession. Yet the government is committed to further fiscal...

Venezuela’s current growth is generally described as unsustainable, with various negative scenarios put forth, including spiraling debt, inflation, and balance of payments crises. However, these pessimistic forecasts have been far off the mark for most of the past decade. This paper looks at...

Could either monetary policy or financial prudential regulation be relied on individually to mitigate asset price cycles or their effects? If both ways are effective, monetary policy and prudential regulation could then be considered “substitutes,” in the sense that the individual use of...

These notes try to clarify some discussions on the formulation of individual intertemporal behavior under adaptive learning in representative agent models. First, we discuss two suggested approaches and related issues in the context of a simple consumption-saving model. Second, we show that the...

To what extent can monetary and financial crises and cycles be explained through economic theories? This paper is aimed at highlighting why a reliance on economic theories may be necessary given certain flaws which have been revealed from the recent Financial Crisis. Namely, that economic and...

Recently, monetary authorities have increasingly focused on implementing policies to ensure price stability and strengthen central bank independence. Simultaneously in the fiscal area, market development has allowed public debt managers to focus more on cost minimization. This |"divorce'' of...

Recently, monetary authorities have increasingly focused on implementing policies to ensure price stability and strengthen central bank independence. Simultaneously in the fiscal area, market development has allowed public debt managers to focus more on cost minimization. This "divorce'' of...

To what extent can monetary and financial crises and cycles be explained through economic theories? This paper is aimed at highlighting why a reliance on economic theories may be necessary given certain flaws which have been revealed from the recent Financial Crisis. Namely, that economic and...

The financial and economic crisis in the Euro area has revealed a number of important flaws in the economic policy framework in Europe. On the one hand, the imbalances, which have dominated European development since the introduction of the euro, are not sustainable; and this is more serious in a...