The Selected Issues paper examines the dynamics of the inflation process in the United Kingdom, particularly the influence of external shocks. The paper provides a brief summary of existing empirical work. It presents the expectations-augmented Phillips curve model used in the analysis. The...

This paper explores the determinants of expected rates of realignment of the French franc/Deutsche mark exchange rate during the period 1987-1991. It does so by first estimating expected parity changes and then relating these to economic variables that are believed to influence agents’...

Could a West African monetary union (either of the non-CFA countries, or all ECOWAS members) be an effective "agency of restraint" on fiscal policies? We discuss how monetary union could affect fiscal discipline and the arguments for explicit fiscal restraints considered in the European Monetary...

Monetary aggregates continue to play an important role in the ECB's policy strategy. This paper revisits the case for money, surveying the ongoing theoretical and empirical debate. The key conclusion is that an exclusive focus on non-monetary factors alone may leave the ECB with an incomplete...

This paper asks whether inflation targeting improves economic performance, as measured by the behavior of inflation, output, and interest rates. We compare 7 OECD countries that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s to 13 that did not. After the early 1990s, performance improved along...

This paper investigates the factors that affect inflation in the GCC region by examining the inflationary processes in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The paper utilizes a model that accounts for foreign factors affecting inflation, such as trading partners' inflation and exchange rate pass-through...

This paper characterizes exchange market pressure as a nonlinear Markov-switching phenomenon, and examines its dynamics in response to money growth and inflation over three regimes. The empirical results identify episodes of exchange market pressure in the Kyrgyz Republic and confirm the...

This paper examines challenges in effectively implementing the lender-of-last-resort function in the EU single financial market. Briefly highlighted are features of the EU financial landscape that could increase EU systemic financial risk. Briefly described are the complexities of the EU's...

The Maastricht inflation criterion, designed in the early 1990s to bring "high-inflation" EU countries in line with "low-inflation" countries prior to the introduction of the euro, poses challenges for both new EU member countries and the European Central Bank. While the criterion has positively...

This paper examines the household demand for narrow money in Poland during the 1980s. At that time, there were shortages, but informal trade in both goods and foreign exchange was common, and holdings of foreign currency were substantial. Household money demand in this environment is first...