Economists often describe nominal exchange rates as forward-looking, so that they reflect discounted, expected, future fundamentals. This study applies a method for identifying the discount rate involved, without knowing or measuring fundamentals. Identification arises from assumptions on the...

The gold-exchange standard in India 1893-1913 was characterized by a narrow target zone for the exchange rate, a wide annual range for the international interest-rate differential, and negative (seasonal) autocorrelation in interest rates. These properties are consistent with a standard...

Phillips curves are central to discussions of inflation dynamics and monetary policy. New Keynesian Phillips curves describe how past inflation, expected future inflation, and a measure of real marginal cost or an output gap drive the current inflation rate. This paper studies the (potential)...

Countries that specialize in commodity exports often exhibit a correlation between the relevant commodity price and the value of their currency. We explore a natural but little-studied explanation for this correlation. An increase in the commodity price leads to increases in the future values of...

Standard models of international risk sharing with complete asset markets predict a positive association between relative consumption growth and real exchange-rate depreciation across countries. The striking lack of evidence for this link the consumption/real-exchange-rate anomaly or...

Historians have suggested there were waves of inflation or price revolutions in the UK (and earlier England) in the 13th, 16th, and 18th centuries, prior to the ongoing inflation since 1914. We study retail price inflation since 1251 and model its forecasts. The model is an AR(n) but allows for...

Standard models of international risk sharing with complete asset markets predict a positive association between relative consumption growth and real exchange-rate depreciations across countries. The striking lack of evidence for this link - the consumption/real-exchange-rate anomaly or...

Much research studies US inflation history with a trend-cycle model with unobserved components. A key feature of this model is that the trend may be viewed as the Fed's evolving inflation target or long-horizon expected inflation. We provide a new way to measure the slowly evolving trend and the...

Differences across countries or decades in the countercyclical stance of fiscal policy can help identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession. We use the heterogeneity in the government-spending reaction functions across twenty...

Interwar macroeconomic history is a natural place to look for evidence on the correlations between (a) deflation and depression and (b) unexpected deflation and depression. We apply time-series methods to measure unexpected deflation or inflation for 26 countries from 1922 to 1939. The results...