The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) implies a considerable change in monetary and fiscal policy design in the European Union. With the aid of a two-country version of the Alesina and Tabellini (1987) model, this paper provides a stylized analysis of monetary and fiscal policy interaction in the EMU. It is shown how macroeconomic outcomes are affected by common monetary and fiscal policies, an...

It is obvious that an optimal policy should consider main dimensions of the phenomenon that can affect the transmission mechanism of that policy. In an open economy, it is expected that variables of the foreign sector play important role in its economic behavior. Therefore, it needs that any optimal policy in an open economy to design in such a way which involves changes in the foreign sector. ...

It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that an important part of the macroeconomic environment is monetary policy. The actions of central banks have material effects on financial markets and can shape macroeconomic outcomes. Indeed, over recent decades it became widely accepted that monetary policy was the primary macroeconomic stabilisation tool and that monetary policy could effectively man...

Papers in the seminar series are also published on internet in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) formats. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and not those of Columbia University or the National Bureau of Economic Research. 1 In recent years a growing consensus has emerged for price stability as the overriding, long-run goal of monetary policy. However, despite this consensus, the ...

The paper looks at the evolution of monetary policy in industrialized countries by evaluating two monetary policy strategies, monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The paper provides brief case studies of countries that have adopted these two strategies and draws a set of lessons. The experience with monetary targeting suggests that although it was successful in controlling inflation in S...

We examine the effects of unconventional monetary policy surprises on the value of the dollar using high-frequency intraday data and contrast them with the effects of conventional policy tools. Identifying monetary policy surprises from changes in interest rate future prices in narrow windows around policy announcements, we find that monetary policy surprises since the Federal Reserve lowered i...

There is an apparent theoretical discrepancy between the effects of monetary policy shocks on economies with differently competitive banking sectors. We employ cross-country data to investigate this hypothesis with two different approaches. First, using aggregate data we analyze the correlation between two indices: (i) a cumulative impulse response function providing an index of the effect of m...

This paper investigates the evolution of monetary policy in the U.S. using a standard set of macroeconomic variables. Many recent papers have addressed the issue of whether the monetary transmission mechanism has changed (e.g. due to the Fed taking a more aggressive stance against in‡ation) or whether apparent changes are simply due to changes in the volatility of exogenous shocks. A subsidiary...

High degree of interest sensitivity of durable goods is now a stylized fact in the literature of monetary policy. This literature, however, does not provide a clear and consensual explanation for the modalities of this stylized fact. In this paper, two independent empirical models are performed to shed more light on the cross-sectoral impacts of monetary policy. The results of first study indic...