Inflation targeting has been widely adopted in both developed and emerging economies. In this essay, I survey the evidence on the effects of inflation targeting on macroeconomic performance and assess what lessons this evidence provides for inflation targeting and the design of monetary policy. While macroeconomic experiences among both inflation targeting and non-targeting developed economies ...

This paper provides a unified theoretical framework to analyze the macroeconomic consequences of capital account liberalizations and capital controls, like capital inflow taxes. It identifies two pecuniary externalities that lead to inefficient outcomes in terms of welfare and to financial instability. The first externality undermines the “terms of trade hedge” while the second leads to excessi...

The purpose of this conference on real estate indicators and financial stability is “to promote the development of reliable, timely and consistent statistics on real estate prices” in order to support policy initiatives to promote macroeconomic stability. The recent volatility of asset prices and the Asian financial crisis of 1997 have focused attention on the role of asset markets and, in part...

A fundamental macroeconomic problem in Zimbabwe is that the sum of public-sector projects is greater than the resources available to finance them. The government’s difficulty in discerning the macroeconomic limitations on new initiatives was greatly increased by the unusual circumstances of the first two years: a commodity boom; promises of more aid than eventually arrived; expectations of a pe...

BACKGROUND To assess whether a banking system crisis increases short-term population cardiovascular mortality rates. METHODS International, longitudinal multivariate regression analysis of cardiovascular disease mortality data from 1960 to 2002 RESULTS A system-wide banking crisis increases population heart disease mortality rates by 6.4% (95% CI: 2.5% to 10.2%, p < 0.01) in high income cou...

This paper quantitatively examines the empirical plausibility of equilibrium indeterminacy and sunspot-driven cyclical fluctuations in a real business cycle model with two distinct production sectors that yield consumption and investment goods, together with separable or non-separable preferences. When calibrated to match the observed progressivity of the U.S. federal individual income tax sche...

The performance and effectiveness of financial institutions are important considerations for policy-makers concerned about economic growth. Growth, after all, is heavily dependent on investment, and a significant fraction of all investment flows through financial institutions. Furthermore, incidences of financial instability in some countries have shown that poor financial policies can have ser...

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between school attainment, school completion, and economic development. In doing so it also examines the effect of other macroeconomic variables on school attainment and completion. Estimation is conducted using a panel dataset of 138 countries. Our results show that income levels, government expenditure on education, and political in...

We consider combinations of subjective survey forecasts and model-based forecasts from linear and non-linear univariate specifications as well as multivariate factor-augmented models. Empirical results suggest that a simple equal-weighted average of survey forecasts outperform the best model-based forecasts for a majority of macroeconomic variables and forecast horizons. Additional improvements...