In this paper we study the role of the exchange rate in conducting monetary policy in an economy with near-zero nominal interest rates as experienced in Japan since the mid-1990s. Our analysis is based on an estimated model of Japan, the United States and the euro area with rational expectations and nominal rigidities. First, we provide a quantitative analysis of the impact of the zero bound on...

We use the inflation premium—the difference between nominal and real interest rates—as a proxy for expected inflation in the context of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve. Using data from inflation-indexed and nominal bonds we estimate a forward-looking Phillips curve for the United Kingdom over the period 1985-2004. The proposed model describes UK inflation dynamics considerably better than does...

Price dynamics in Indian cities were examined using cointegration analysis. We identified and calculated a common trend for prices in 25 major cities in India. Impulse response functions were obtained to calculate the rates of convergence to the prices and we found that the half-life of any shock is very small for Indian cities. Although a close to three-month half-life seems too fast, there is...

This paper studies the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis in two areas with strong differences in economic development, sixteen OECD countries and sixteen Latin American economies. Applying panel cointegration and bootstrapping techniques that solve for cross-sectional dependence problems in the data, we find that the second stage of the hypothesis, which relates relative sector prices with the real ...

We show that deviations from the law of one price in tradable goods are an important source of violations of absolute PPP across countries. Using highly disaggregated export data, we document systematic international price discrimination: at the U.S. dock, U.S. exporters ship the same good to low-income countries at lower prices. This pricing-to-market is about twice as important as any local n...

This paper examines, for the Brazilian case, if break-even inflation rates (BEIR) extracted from fixed income securities is an unbiased estimator of consumer inflation, measured by the CPI. Our estimates suggest that BEIRs are informative about future inflation, especially for the maturity of three months. The main innovation of our work, however, is the method used for estimation, allowing us ...

We forecast quarterly US in‡ation based on the generalized Phillips curve using econometric methods which incorporate dynamic model averaging. These methods not only allow for coe¢ cients to change over time, but also allow for the entire forecasting model to change over time. We …nd that dynamic model averaging leads to substantial forecasting improvements over simple benchmark regressions and...

This paper adopts a New Keynesian approach to analyze the relationship between nominal interest rates and prices. In this new framework, both a positive relation between interest rates and price levels (i.e., a positive Gibson effect) and a negative relation between interest rates and subsequent price changes (i.e., a negative Fama-Fisher effect) arise when money is supplied inelastically and p...

The interrelationship between house prices and mortgage credit has been one of the more compelling issues to warrant attention after the recent financial crisis. Considerable financial innovation and liberalisation of wholesale international funding markets over the past 20 years greatly increased the ability of banking sectors to extend credit to the real economy. Almost inevitably many countr...

We compare optimal and simple interest-rate rules. Our model features optimizing agents, monopolistic competition in both product and labor markets, and one-period nominal contracts (for wages alone or for both wages and prices) signed before shocks are known. Exact solutions ensure that we obtain correct welfare rankings. Optimal rules maximize the unconditional expected utility of the represe...