Long-term nominal interest rates in a number of inflation-targeting small open economies have tended to be highly correlated with those of the United States. This observation has recently lent support to the view that the long end of the yield curve is determined abroad. We set up and estimate a...

The terms of trade are subject to both permanent and transitory shocks. Particularly for commodity-producing small open economies, it is sometimes argued that the inability of agents to determine which of these shocks are permanent and which are transitory leads to more macroeconomic volatility...

We use a structural vector autoregression model to characterise the aggregate and industry effects of exchange rate movements on the Australian economy. We find that a temporary 10 per cent appreciation of the real exchange rate that is unrelated to the terms of trade or interest rate...

We use state-space methods to construct new estimates of Australian gross domestic product (GDP) growth from the published national accounts estimates of expenditure, income and production. Across a range of specifications, our measures are substantially less volatile than headline GDP growth....

We use a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) to examine the effect of unanticipated changes in monetary policy on the expenditure and production components of GDP over the period from 1983 to 2007. We find that dwelling investment and machinery & equipment investment are the most...

This paper explores the effect of terms of trade volatility on macroeconomic volatility using a panel of 71 countries from 1971–2005. It finds that terms of trade volatility has a statistically significant and positive impact on the volatility of output growth and inflation, although the...

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One of the recurring themes in the literature on financial systems is whether financial integration – that is, openness in the domestic and international financial system – has real, structural economic effects. This paper examines the effect of financial openness on the consumption of...

This paper considers whether capital is a significant constraint on employment in Australia. We calculate the level of capital-constrained employment for ten sectors of the Australian economy. The calculations suggest that the manufacturing; mining; transport, storage and communication and...

The two recently developed Australian indexes of leading indicators have received much attention in the press. Despite this, relatively little is known about their usefulness in forecasting the associated indexes of coincident indicators (i.e., measures of the business cycle) or any activity...