In deciding the monetary policy stance, central bankers need to evaluate carefully the risks the current economic situation poses to price stability. We propose to regard the central banker as a risk manager who aims to contain inflation within pre-specified bounds. We develop formal tools of...

It is standard in applied work to select forecasting models by ranking candidate models by their prediction mean square error (PMSE) in simulated ou-of-sample (SOOS) forecasts. Alternatively, forecast models may be selected using information criteria (IC). We compare the asymptotic and...

This paper develops a welfare-based model of monetary policy in an open economy. We focus on the extent to which monetary policy should be employed in maintaining the exchange rate. The traditional approach maintains that exchange rate flexibility is desirable in the presence of real...

This paper studies monetary policy games in a two-period Mundell-Fleming model, under a regime of managed exchange rates. A regime of managed exchange rates is defined as one where exchange rates are pegged but bilateral parities can be changed from time to time. The paper argues that such a...

This paper considers the effects of monetary and fiscal policies in an optimizing model with capital accumulation and finite lives. An increase in monetary growth is no longer superneutral in a money-capital economy, but leads to a reduction in the real interest rate and increases in the capital...

This paper analyses the costs and benefits of European monetary unification. The benefits take the form of the reduction in exchange risk, equalization of interest rates, decline in relative price variability and general increase in economic efficiency likely to accompany unification. The costs...

This paper analyses and compares the effects of common demand and supply shocks on the setting of optimal monetary policies under a clean float, a managed exchange rate system (such as the EMS) and a monetary union, when welfare depends on unemployment and the cost of living. The results suggest...

The work presented in this paper falls into two parts. First, using a simple model and within the context of the central bank’s objective of price stability, it is shown that the optimal monetary response to unexpected changes in asset prices depends on how these changes affect the central...

A new theory of price determination suggests that if primary surpluses are independent of the level of debt, the price level has to ‘jump’ to assure fiscal solvency. In this regime (which we call fiscal dominant), monetary policy has to work through seignorage to control the price level. If,...

It is shown that, when there is a genuine long-run trade-off between inflation and output, coordination under pre-commitment yields substantial improvements in economic welfare. The analysis is conducted within the context of a two-country model with capital accumulation, immobile labour,...