Data for around 100 countries from 1960 to 1990 are used to assess the effects of inflation on economic performance. If a number of country characteristics are held constant, then regression results indicate that the impact effects from an increase in average inflation by 10 percentage points per year are a reduction of the growth rate of real per capita GDP by 0.2-0.3 percentage points per yea...

Because inflation targeting is a relatively recent phenomena, in the past we have had insufficient data to conduct time-series econometric work to evaluate this important new monetary policy strategy. However, now that inflation targeting has been around for close to ten years, we are able to do some preliminary econometric work on this topic. This is exactly what Neumann and von Hagen do in th...

We adopt a simple Present Value (PV) methodology to investigate the interaction between interest rates, inflation and taxation on the fundamental value of residential real estate for a rational investor with varying degrees of risk-aversion. This approach allows the calculation of the fair present value of residential real estate from only a small number of macro-economic variables, and avoids ...

Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave background anisotropies such as their amplitude and spectral properties. However, if one were to try and infer an absolute energy scale for inflation-a priori, on...

Closed string tachyon condensation in spacetime generates potentials on the worldsheet that model two-dimensional inflationary cosmology. These models illustrate and elucidate a variety of aspects of inflation, in particular the generation of quantum fluctuations and their back-reaction on geometry. We exhibit a class of Liouville gravity models coupled to matter that can exhibit, for example: ...

Inflation targeting has become the predominant monetary approach across the globe. In this paper, we examine the inflation targeting experience in developing countries. We estimate the effects of inflation targeting on macroeconomic performance in these economies. The approach is based on the methodology applied by Pétursson (2005) which uses panel data to assess the effects of inflation target...

The EU acceding countries are supposed to adopt the Euro as soon as economic convergence is achieved. This paper offers a methodology to quantify the economic consequences of an acceding country’s EMU entrance. A small macroeconomic two-country model is specified and combined with two different monetary policy regimes: (i) national monetary policy, (ii) monetary union. The performance of the tw...

This study is about the earnings-replacement rate of the old-age benefit for the average worker in manufacturing who had average earnings throughout his career. It updates previously published data for earlier years and compares the replacement rate of the combined social security and private pension benefits for selected countries, in an attempt to show what a more complete benefit package mig...