New estimates of pass-through coefficients for the Middle East and North Africa indicate that a rise of global food prices is transmitted to a significant degree into domestic food prices. Over the past decade, transmission from international to domestic prices has been particularly high for...

This paper constructs a number of possible core measures of annual inflation using Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). Annual inflation is decomposed into its trend, oscillating and noise components in order to develop an understanding of the trend and cyclicality in South African headline...

Theoretical and empirical literature on inflation is extensive, and it abounds with diverse opinion. Principal works are of overseas origin; no substantial research has been published relating specifically to the New Zealand economy. This study does not attempt to develop a comprehensive theory...

French Abstract: L'Afrique francophone a été dominée jusqu'à présent par les répercussions politiques, économiques et culturelles de la domination coloniale française. Contrairement à la domination coloniale « indirecte » de la Grande-Bretagne, Paris gouvernait ses (anciennes)...

This paper develops a new index of economic uncertainty for South Africa for the period 1990-2014 and analyses the macroeconomic impact of changes in this measure. The index is constructed from three sources: (1) Disagreement among professional forecasters about macroeconomic conditions using...

The 1998 Code for Fiscal Stability sets out the framework within which UK fiscal policy is now set. While having such a code does not make it easier for a Government to meet its fiscal objectives, it may improve the economic credibility of the policy process. To date the Code has generally...

This paper empirically analyses the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilising panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic, research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of...

We empirically investigate whether the relationship between interest rates and public deficits/debt may be nonlinear for the U.S. Using threshold estimation, we find evidence of level-dependent effects on interest rates, implying a significant effect of projected deficits and debt in the U.S....

Der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt ist in den vergangenen Jahren von einer zunehmenden Zahl von Ländern verletzt worden. Dies deutet auf Mängel in der Gestaltung bzw. in der Umsetzung des Pakts hin. Kritisiert wird insbesondere das zentrale Kriterium für eine nachhaltige Finanzpolitik, eine...

Cyclically induced changes in taxes and government expenditures which tend to stabilise aggregate output are called automatic stabilisers. Using a small macro model, this paper reviews alternative methods of measuring the smoothing power of automatic stabilisers and discusses their relationship...