The West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) has a history of monetary stability and low inflation. Nevertheless, there is substantial variation in relative prices within some UEMOA countries, in particular in the price of food relative to other elements of the retail price index (IHPC)....

We assume that central banks can control inflation so that inflation rates reflect the preferences of the central bank council.The hypothesis to be tested is that these preferences depend on the central bankers’ educational and/or professional background. In a panel data analysis for the euro...

Accession to the Economic and Monetary Union is one of the most important steps in Hungary's European integration, which will entail abandoning the national currency and adopting the euro as domestic legal tender. For Hungary as a new member state in the EU, introduction of the euro will not be...

In this study we examine the impact on Hungary of a possible correction of global imbalances. We distinguished four different channels of the global adjustment process, which are widely referred to in the literature (fiscal tightening in the U.S.; housing price correction in the US; an increase...

The interest rate policy of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank typically consists of taking several smaller steps in one direction. Other central banks follow similar practices. Their interest rate policy actions are characterised by gradual changes: in other words, they avoid sudden, major changes in...

The focus of this paper is on the use of staff policy recommendations in central banks. Based on the responses to a recent survey conducted by the Bank of International Settlements, the paper tries to answer two questions. (1) How (to what extent) do central bank decision-makers make use of...

This paper re-examines a problem of congested inputs in the Chinese automobile and textile industries, which was identified by Cooper et al. (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 35 (2001) 227-242). These authors employed a single approach to measuring congestion, however, so it is of interest to...

Between 1995 and 2005, the German economy has experienced a phase of weak economic growth. We analyze whether this weak growth performance can be attributed to the stance of monetary conditions during that period. We show that the real effective exchange rate did have almost no dampening effects...

In the standard New Keynesian sticky price model the central bank faces no contradiction between the stabilization of inflation and the stabilization of the welfare relevant output gap after a productivity shock hits the economy. When the standard model is enhanced by real wage rigidities or...