Having a correct assessment of current business cycle conditions is one of the major challenges for monetary policy conduct. Given that GDP figures are available with a significant delay central banks are increasingly using Nowcasting as a useful tool for having an immediate perception of...

In general, central banks are concerned with keeping the inflation rate stable while also sustaining output close to an efficient level. Under "inflation targeting", forecasts of the evolution of the general price level are an essential input for policy decisions and these are usually released...

Hodrick-Prescott filter has been the favourite empirical technique among researchers studying cycles. Software facilities and the optimality criterion, from which the filter can be derived, can explain its wide use. However, different shortcomings and drawbacks have been pointed out in the...

This paper studies the relationship between devaluation and default risks during Argentina's convertibility regime. Before default and devaluation occurred, a harder variant of the currency regime was under discussion. An often-suggested argument among the supporters of dollarization was that...