Recent models of monetary policy have analyzed the desirability of different optimal and ad hoc interest rules under the restrictive assumption that forecasts of the private sector and the central bank are homogenous. This paper studies the implications of heterogeneity in forecasting by the central bank and private agents for the performance of interest rules in a framework of econometric lear...

There is no doubt that the challenge of boosting savings is of great importance if Egypt was to sustain the achieved growth rate and increase its investment rate. This paper studies the role of financial liberalization in stimulating savings, investment and growth, with reference to the Egypt. The growth of output of any economy depends on capital accumulation, which in turn requires investment...

This paper evaluates the type of exchange rate equations that are part of the multicountry economtric model in Fair (1994). Two equations are analyzed— one estimated for the dollar/yen rate and one for the dollar/mark rate. The forecasts from the equations dominate forecasts from the random walk model, from a fairly general version of the monetary model, and from the use of the forward rate. Th...

This paper analyses the impact of a move from fractional to decimal pricing in the UK Long Gilt futures market. The reduced tick size following decimalisation leads to an increase in price clustering. The bid-ask spread, measured in ticks, increases following the tick size reduction. However, due to a reduced tick value, the monetary value of the spread declines. There is a substantial reductio...

D espite a significant decline in the pace of economic growth in the second half of 2000, macroeconomic forecasters underpredicted real GDP growth and overpredicted the unemployment rate by a significant amount, for the fifth consecutive year. On average, real GDP forecasts were about 2 percentage points below the actual data for the 1996-2000 period, and unemployment rate forecasts about 0.5 p...

I. Recent Currency Crises A salient fact of Mexico’s and Thailand’s recent currency crises is the active role played by the monetary authority in contributing to the loss of reserves. In both cases, domestic credit showed a sizable increase, driven in part by central bank loans to the financial sector. This stands in sharp contrast with the standard economist’s model in which the proximate caus...

We consider an economy where trade is decentralized and agents have incomplete information with respect to the value of money. Agents’ learning evolves from private experiences and we explore how the formation of prices interacts with learning. We show that multiple equilibria arise, and equilibria with price dispersion entail more learning than equilibria with one price. Price dispersion incre...

The Business School at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) employs approximately 150 academic staff in a state-of-the-art environment located in Hatfield Business Park. It offers 17 undergraduate degree programmes, 21 postgraduate programmes and there are about 80 research students, mostly working at doctoral level. Business School staff are active in research in numerous areas, including comp...

Abstract Large swings in capital flows into and out of emerging markets can potentially lead to excessive volatility in asset prices and credit supply. In order to lessen the impact of capital flows on financial instability, a number of researchers and policy markers have recently proposed the use of capital controls. This paper considers the benefit of adding capital controls as a potential in...

Monetary policy has an important role in the determination of the inflation rate and the output gap time trajectories. Monetary authorities should choose the nominal interest rate time path that best serves the goals of price stability (primarily) and output growth (as a consequence of the first). In this paper it is presented a framework under which an optimal interest rate rule is computed, a...