Several countries are concurrently experiencing historically low inflation rates and ageing populations. Is there a connection, as recently suggested by some senior central bankers? We undertake a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in a panel of 22 countries over the 1955–2010 period. We...

Some observers argue that increased real integration has led to greater comovement of prices internationally. We examine the evidence for cross-border price spillovers among economies participating in the pan-Asian cross-border production networks. Starting with country-level data, we find that...

This study finds that the growth in labour costs in China is not passed through fully to final prices in China, neither in the tradable goods sector nor in the economy as a whole. This probably reflects the strong pressure on profit margins from a highly competitive environment, especially in...

This paper reviews analytical work carried out by central banks that participated in the Autumn Meeting of Central Bank Economists on "The evolving inflation process" which the BIS hosted on 28-29 October 2005. The paper first discusses efforts to document the univariate statistical properties...

Several authors have recently interpreted the ECB's two-pillar framework as separate approaches to forecast and analyse inflation at different time horizons or frequency bands. The ECB has publicly supported this understanding of the framework. This paper presents further evidence on the...

On 18-19 June 2004, the BIS held a conference on "Understanding Low Inflation and Deflation". This event brought together central bankers, academics and market practitioners to exchange views on this issue (see the conference programme in this document). This paper was presented at the workshop....

This paper studies the relationship between macroeconomic behaviour and the monetary policy regime in Hong Kong and Singapore, using data for 1984-2004. We estimate an econometric model, comprising a Phillips curve, an IS curve and an equation for changes in the nominal effective exchange rate...

Since the start of the financial crisis, industrial country public debt levels have increased dramatically. And they are set to continue rising for the foreseeable future. A number of countries face the prospect of large and rising future costs related to the ageing of their populations. In this...

There has been mounting evidence that the inflation process has been changing. Inflation is now much lower and much more stable around the globe. And its sensitivity to measures of economic slack and increases in input costs appears to have declined. Probably the most widely supported...

This paper estimates the Balassa-Samuelson effects for 11 countries in central and eastern Europe on a disaggregated set of quarterly data covering the period from the mid-1990s to the first quarter of 2008. The Balassa-Samuelson effects are clearly present and explain around 24% of inflation...