This paper provides some practical advice on establishing initial conditions in support of an inflation-targeting monetary framework. These conditions are divided into four areas: a mandate in support of an inflation objective and accountability for achieving this objective; macroeconomic...

The paper analyses the factors leading to the fall of long-term interest rates in the Czech Republic – respectively, the long-term interest rate differential in the Czech Republic and the Eurozone – between 1998 and 2003. The selection of factors is determined by the Fisher equation, UIP,...

Applying and extending the open-economy loanable funds model, this article shows that more government borrowing or debt as a percent of GDP leads to a higher government bond yield, that a higher real money market rate, a higher expected inflation rate, a higher EU government bond yield, or...

A contribution appeared in the previous issue of Panoeconomicus reviewed the theoretical arguments brought by Alain Parguez and Jean Gabriel Bliek in support of their idea of assigning a full employment objective to European economic policies and their coordination (Bliek and Parguez (2007) and...

This paper finds that public debt and a range of other economic variables are surprisingly weakly correlated with sovereign spreads in EU countries. Democratic capital, on the other hand, was a powerful predictor of spread heights between 2003 and 2007, while its relevance disappeared in late...

This paper explores how prudential regulations can support monetary policy in reducing output fluctuations while maintaining financial stability. It uses a new framework that blends a standard model for monetary policy analysis with a contingent claims model of financial sector vulnerabilities....

We use a panel of 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009 to investigate the effects of different fiscal adjustment strategies on long-term interest rates ? a key fiscal indicator reflecting the costs of government debt service. A government confronted with high deficits and rising debt will sooner...

The Bank of England's current "quantitative easing" strategy has given rise to a controversial debate about the effects and risks of unconventional monetary policy. The present paper makes two contributions to this debate. First, it provides a systematic overview of unconventional policy...

The recent expansion of the balance sheet of the consolidated Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) is analyzed in an historical context. The analysis reveals that the nature of Fed involvement in U.S. financial markets has changed dramatically and its expansion is several orders of magnitude beyond what...

This is the third chapter of a forthcoming monograph entitled "On Implementing Full-Fledged Inflation-Targeting Regimes: Saying What You Do and Doing What You Say." It examines a number of elements in the design of an inflation-targeting framework. These include the definition of the target...