Download or read book Inflation Expectations written by Peter J. N. Sinclair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Download or read book Toward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living written by United States. Congress. Senate. Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Inflation Targeting Debate written by Ben S. Bernanke and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Download or read book The Great Inflation written by Michael D. Bordo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Download or read book Disinflation in Transition Economies written by Ms.Sharmini Coorey and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1996-12-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of the persistence of moderate inflation in many transition economies, this paper analyzes whether inflation resulted from insufficiently tight financial policies and wage pressures or from the protracted adjustment of relative prices. Using a new database for 21 countries, the effect of relative price variability on inflation is estimated within a framework controlling for nominal and real shocks. Money and wage growth were the most important determinants of inflation; relative price variability had a sizable effect at high inflation during initial liberalization and a small effect at moderate inflation. Cost recovery may contribute to variability, particularly in the advanced stages of the transition.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Rules written by John B. Taylor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

Download or read book Inflation in Emerging and Developing Economies written by Jongrim Ha and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-02-24 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study in the context of EMDEs that covers, in one consistent framework, the evolution and global and domestic drivers of inflation, the role of expectations, exchange rate pass-through and policy implications. In addition, the report analyzes inflation and monetary policy related challenges in LICs. The report documents three major findings: In First, EMDE disinflation over the past four decades was to a significant degree a result of favorable external developments, pointing to the risk of rising EMDE inflation if global inflation were to increase. In particular, the decline in EMDE inflation has been supported by broad-based global disinflation amid rapid international trade and financial integration and the disruption caused by the global financial crisis. While domestic factors continue to be the main drivers of short-term movements in EMDE inflation, the role of global factors has risen by one-half between the 1970s and the 2000s. On average, global shocks, especially oil price swings and global demand shocks have accounted for more than one-quarter of domestic inflation variatio--and more in countries with stronger global linkages and greater reliance on commodity imports. In LICs, global food and energy price shocks accounted for another 12 percent of core inflation variatio--half more than in advanced economies and one-fifth more than in non-LIC EMDEs. Second, inflation expectations continue to be less well-anchored in EMDEs than in advanced economies, although a move to inflation targeting and better fiscal frameworks has helped strengthen monetary policy credibility. Lower monetary policy credibility and exchange rate flexibility have also been associated with higher pass-through of exchange rate shocks into domestic inflation in the event of global shocks, which have accounted for half of EMDE exchange rate variation. Third, in part because of poorly anchored inflation expectations, the transmission of global commodity price shocks to domestic LIC inflation (combined with unintended consequences of other government policies) can have material implications for poverty: the global food price spikes in 2010-11 tipped roughly 8 million people into poverty.

Download or read book Reducing Inflation written by Christina D. Romer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is ample evidence that high inflation is harmful, little is known about how best to reduce inflation or how far it should be reduced. In this volume, sixteen distinguished economists analyze the appropriateness of low inflation as a goal for monetary policy and discuss possible strategies for reducing inflation. Section I discusses the consequences of inflation. These papers analyze inflation's impact on the tax system, labor market flexibility, equilibrium unemployment, and the public's sense of well-being. Section II considers the obstacles facing central bankers in achieving low inflation. These papers study the precision of estimates of equilibrium unemployment, the sources of the high inflation of the 1970s, and the use of non-traditional indicators in policy formation. The papers in section III consider how institutions can be designed to promote successful monetary policy, and the importance of institutions to the performance of policy in the United States, Germany, and other countries. This timely volume should be read by anyone who studies or conducts monetary policy.

Download or read book Why Inflation Targeting written by Charles Freedman and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second chapter of a forthcoming monograph entitled "On Implementing Full-Fledged Inflation-Targeting Regimes: Saying What You Do and Doing What You Say." We begin by discussing the costs of inflation, including their role in generating boom-bust cycles. Following a general discussion of the need for a nominal anchor, we describe a specific type of monetary anchor, the inflation-targeting regime, and its two key intellectual roots-the absence of long-run trade-offs and the time-inconsistency problem. We conclude by providing a brief introduction to the way in which inflation targeting works.

Download or read book Optimal Pricing Inflation and the Cost of Price Adjustment written by Eytan Sheshinski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These collected articles constitute what is perhaps the definitive study of pricing models under inflation, providing a solid basis for further research on this elusive question. What are the real effects of inflation? These collected articles constitute what is perhaps the definitive study of pricing models under inflation, providing a solid basis for further research on this elusive question. Covering a broad range of theory and applications by well-known microeconomists, the eighteen contributions evaluate the effects of inflation on aggregate output and on welfare and reveal the scope of recent efforts to explicitly incorporate frictions in economic models. A basic building block common to most of the essays in this volume is the observation that individual firms change nominal prices intermittently. The frequency and size of nominal price changes are influenced by the cost of price adjustment and changes in the economic environment, production costs, market demand, market structure, and most important, inflation. Thus the degree of nominal rigidity is influenced by the economic environment, and in a dynamic context. Two introductory essays survey the empirical studies of pricing policies by individual firms and the theoretical efforts to integrate the nominal rigidities at the micro level into macro relationships. The essays that follow treat the general problem of optimal dynamic adjustment in the presence of convex costs of adjustment, include applications of the inventory models to the case of nominal price adjustment by an individual firm, address the question of aggregation, introduce active search by consumers, and provide empirical analysis of nominal price rigidities.

Download or read book Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation written by Alan S. Blinder and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation discusses the national economic policy and economics as a policy-oriented science. This book summarizes what economists do and do not know about the inflation and recession that affected the U.S. economy during the years of the Great Stagflation in the mid-1970s. The topics discussed include the basic concepts of stagflation, turbulent economic history of 1971-1976, anatomy of the great recession and inflation, and legacy of the Great Stagflation. The relation of wage-price controls, fiscal policy, and monetary policy to the Great Stagflation is also elaborated. This publication is beneficial to economists and students researching on the history of the Great Stagflation and policy errors of the 1970s.

Download or read book Inflation Theory and Anti inflation Policy written by International Economic Association and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability written by Martin Feldstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the Federal Reserve and central banks worldwide have enjoyed remarkable success in their battle against inflation. The challenge now confronting the Fed and its counterparts is how to proceed in this newly benign economic environment: Should monetary policy seek to maintain a rate of low-level inflation or eliminate inflation altogether in an effort to attain full price stability? In a seminal article published in 1997, Martin Feldstein developed a framework for calculating the gains in economic welfare that might result from a move from a low level of inflation to full price stability. The present volume extends that analysis, focusing on the likely costs and benefits of achieving price stability not only in the United States, but in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom as well. The results show that even small changes in already low inflation rates can have a substantial impact on the economic performance of different countries, and that variations in national tax rules can affect the level of gain from disinflation.

Download or read book Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks written by Davide Debortoli and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when ensuring a low probability of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates.

Download or read book Asset Prices and Monetary Policy written by John Y. Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

Download or read book Inflation in Open Economies written by Michael Parkin and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Central Banking in Theory and Practice written by Alan S. Blinder and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999-01-07 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan S. Blinder offers the dual perspective of a leading academic macroeconomist who served a stint as Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board—one who practiced what he had long preached and then returned to academia to write about it. He tells central bankers how they might better incorporate academic knowledge and thinking into the conduct of monetary policy, and he tells scholars how they might reorient their research to be more attuned to reality and thus more useful to central bankers. Based on the 1996 Lionel Robbins Lectures, this readable book deals succinctly, in a nontechnical manner, with a wide variety of issues in monetary policy. The book also includes the author's suggested solution to an age-old problem in monetary theory: what it means for monetary policy to be "neutral."