In recent years increasing use has been made in monetary policy analysis of the so-called Monetary Conditions Index (MCI). The index is defined as a linear combination of changes in a short-term real interest rate and in the real effective exchange rate, whose coefficients are equal to the...

Over the past two years, the key trading economies in SE Asia experienced major economic crises, involving financial turbulence, large capital outflows and currency depreciations. These, in turn, resulted in severe financial constraints and business failures and required major domestic...