JEL Classification: J15, N31 Improving early prenatal and postnatal conditions account for at least 16 to 17 percent of the decline in ten year mortality rates of 60-79 year olds between 1900 and 1960-80. Historical trends in early prenatal and postnatal conditions imply that while the baby-boom cohort may be particularly long-lived compared to past cohorts, mortality rates may not fall as stee...

This paper outlines the evolution of the theory of economic policy from the classical contributions of Frisch, Hansen, Tinbergen and Theil to situations of strategic interaction. Andrew Hughes Hallett has taken an active and relevant part in this evolution, having contributed to both the development and recent rediscovery of the classical theory, with possible relevant applications for model bu...

This paper compares two types of monetary policy: price-level targeting and inflation targeting. It reviews recent arguments that favour price-level targeting, and examines how certain factors, such as the nature of the shocks affecting the economy and the degree to which agents are forwardlooking, bear upon the arguments. The paper then extends the analysis to a small open economy such as Cana...

We study the interaction between monetary and fiscal policies in a Ramsey-Sidrauski model augmented with environmental capital. Equilibrium solutions are studied through “Green Golden Rule”. Despite non-separability of money utility intertemporally non-separable preferences, is environmentally neutral. Policy impacts environment via marginal rate transformation rather than substitution consumpt...

This paper surveys the institutional and operational features of the six modern currency boards. The survey is developed around three key aspects: organisation, operations and legal foundation. By laying out the facts, this survey seeks to shed light on how and why modern currency boards in practice are different from the classic definition, and to distil from their features an updated definiti...

We estimate the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Evans (2005) on United Kingdom data. Our estimates suggest that price stickiness is a more important source of nominal rigidity in the U.K. than wage stickiness. Our estimates of parameters governing investment behavior are only well behaved when post-1979 observations are included, which reflects govern...

Central bankers’ conventional wisdom suggests that nominal interest rates should be raised to implement a lower inflation target. In contrast, I show that the standard New Keynesian monetary model predicts that nominal interest rates should be decreased to attain this goal. Real interest rates, however, are virtually unchanged. These results also hold in recent vintages of New Keynesian models ...

Previous work in monetary policy futures markets under a single policy goal have shown this approach to be effective at eliminating the circularity problem inherent with private-sector targeting strategies. We extend this monetary policy setting framework to a typical multiple goal policy objective: inflation and output stabilization. We also demonstrate how the prices in policy futures markets...

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between oil price changes and output in a group of oil exporting countries. The dynamics of business cycles in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kuwait, Venezuela and Qatar are modeled by alternative regime switching models. We show that the extension of uni-variate Markov Switching model in order to include oil revenue improves dating busi...

This paper investigates currency and financial crises in an optimizing general equilibrium model. It is shown that a rise in current and expected future budget deficits generates a real exchange rate appreciation and a decumulation of external assets, leading up to a currency crisis when foreign reserves approximate a critical level. Strong empirical support for our model is obtained by a probi...