How explosive are cryptocurrency prices?

How Fast Are Prices in Japan Falling?

The consumer price inflation rate in Japan has been below zero since the mid-1990s. However, despite the presence of a substantial output gap, the rate of deflation has been much smaller than that observed in the United States during the Great Depression. Given this, doubts have been raised regarding the accuracy of Japan’s official inflation estimates. Against this backdrop, the purpose of thi...

How Sensitive are Low Income Families to Health Plan Prices?

As health care reform moves forward in the United States, one common feature of virtually all proposals is to expand coverage for low income populations not through a traditional public insurance model, but rather through a “defined contribution exchange” mechanism. Under this approach, low income individuals would have a choice of a number of options for their insurance coverage. Individuals w...

How Important are Trade Prices for Trade Flows?

U.S. imports and exports respond little to exchange rate changes in the short run. Pricing behavior has long been thought central to explaining this response: if local prices do not respond to exchange rates, neither will trade flows. Sticky prices and strategic complementarities in price setting generate sluggish responses, and they are necessary to match newly available international micro pr...

Globalisation, import prices and inflation: how reliable are the ‘tailwinds’?

Rising ratios of trade to world output (Chart 1) and the integration of emerging markets in the global economy (Chart 2) have been key aspects of globalisation. Several of the possible macroeconomic consequences were explored in a recent Quarterly Bulletin article by Spange and Young (2007). These phenomena are having a profound effect on the world economy. But what implications do they have fo...

Are Crude Oil, Gas And Coal Prices Co integrated?