Convergence in inflation rates may not imply a process of convergence in price levels. If this were the case in the European Union, small but consistent differences in inflation would lead to inevitable realignments and would end up in a set back of the inflation convergence process. For some...

Inflation has fallen dramatically in countries like Spain and Italy over the last decade, but the rate of increase in "home good" prices remains stubbornly higher than the rate of increase in "traded good" prices. The paper begins by showing that this discrepancy can be explained (at least in...

This paper examines price and inflation convergence between three European countries (Italy, Spain and the UK) and a European idiosyncratic average and, alternatively, between them and Germany since the beginning of the 80's.

In recent years a growing consensus has emerged for price stability as the overriding, long-run goal of monetary policy. However, despite this consensus, the following question still remains: how should monetary policy be conducted to achieve the price stability goal? This paper examines the...

Favorable conditions existed for world economic growth during the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet real GDP growth rates for 76 ou of 87 countries included in this study decreased during this time, relative to the 1968-80 period. The middle income countries experienced the greatest decline in growth...

On 6 June a audience of 450 drawn from small firms organisations, banks, trade associations and other communication multipliers attended "Enterprises 2002" to reflect on the practical impact for enterprises of the end of the transition period on 31 December 2001. This conference had been...

Low rates of inflation have been recorded in the United States in recent years despite a decline in the unemployment rate. This phenomenon could be the results of a series of transitory shocks or of a permanent charge in the structure of the economy leading to a lower NAIRU. The paper suggests...

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the implications for aggregate price dynamics of alternative characterizations of microeconomic price adjustment policies. Within the hazard adjustment framework developed in Caballero and Engel (1993a), we present alternative models of individual price...

Inflation has fallen dramatically in countries like Spain and Italy over the last decade, but the rate of increase in "home good" prices remains stubbornly higher than the rate of increase in "traded good" prices. The paper begins by showing that this discrepancy can be explained (at least in...

This paper looks at the long term output effect of those monetary policies aimed at reducing inflation from its peak by late seventies, in nine major OECD countries. The estimated effect depends on the way nominal shocks are identified. Alternatively to the cross-country regression analysis we...