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2095 Results

June 21, 2006

Credibility with Flexibility: The Evolution of Inflation-Targeting Regimes, 1990–2006

Beginning with a review of the adoption of inflation targeting in a broad group of countries, Paulin focuses on changes in the design of inflation-targeting frameworks in light of fifteen years of accumulated experience. Included in the discussion are the use of numerical targets and ranges, the policy horizon, supporting institutional policy structures, and communication, including the publication of forecasts. A recurring theme is how much flexibility an inflation-targeting regime allows. The article concludes that the changes made to the frameworks have been relatively modest since their adoption, but in concert with the improved credibility that has resulted from central banks meeting their inflation-control targets, they have allowed an increasingly nuanced response to economic shocks.

The Role of Corporate Saving over the Business Cycle: Shock Absorber or Amplifier?

Staff working paper 2018-59 Xiaodan Gao, Shaofeng Xu
We document countercyclical corporate saving behavior with the degree of countercyclicality varying nonmonotonically with firm size. We then develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms to explain the pattern and study its implications for business cycles.

Market Size and Entry in International Trade: Product Versus Firm Fixed Costs

Staff working paper 2018-43 Walter Steingress
This paper develops a theoretical framework to infer the nature of fixed costs from the relationship between entry patterns in international markets and destination market size. If fixed costs are at the firm level, firms take advantage of an intrafirm spillover by expanding firm-level product range (scope).

A Counterfactual Valuation of the Stock Index as a Predictor of Crashes

Staff working paper 2017-38 Tom Roberts
Stock market fundamentals would not seem to meaningfully predict returns over a shorter-term horizon—instead, I shift focus to severe downside risk (i.e., crashes).

Central Bank Digital Currency and Monetary Policy

Staff working paper 2018-36 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini
Many central banks are contemplating whether to issue central bank digital currency. This piece explores the implications as well as potential motivators of such a step.

Monetary Policy and Government Debt Dynamics Without Commitment

Staff working paper 2019-52 Dmitry Matveev
I show that maturity considerations affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policy during a period of government debt reduction. I consider a New Keynesian model and study a dynamic game of monetary and fiscal policy authorities without commitment, characterizing the incentives that drive the choice of interest rate.

Financial Crisis Interventions

Staff working paper 2016-29 Josef Schroth
This paper develops a model of an economy where bank credit supports both productive investment and individual consumption smoothing in the face of idiosyncratic income risk. Bank credit is constrained by bank equity capital.

A Bitcoin Standard: Lessons from the Gold Standard

Staff working paper 2016-14 Warren E. Weber
This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the Bitcoin standard, a monetary system in which all media of exchange are Bitcoin or are backed by it. The paper explores the similarities and differences between the Bitcoin standard and the gold standard and describes the media of exchange that would exist under the Bitcoin standard.

Starting from a Blank Page? Semantic Similarity in Central Bank Communication and Market Volatility

Staff working paper 2016-37 Michael Ehrmann, Jonathan Talmi
Press releases announcing and explaining monetary policy decisions play a critical role in the communication strategy of central banks. Because of their market-moving potential, it is particularly important how they are drafted. Often, central banks start from the previous statement and update the earlier text with only small changes.

Beyond the averages: Measuring underlying wage growth using Labour Force Survey microdata

Staff analytical note 2024-23 Fares Bounajm, Tessa Devakos, Gabriela Galassi
When it comes to understanding the influence of labour costs on inflation, average wage growth is a misleading indicator because it is affected by composition effects. We propose an alternative measure that corrects for these effects by using microdata from the Labour Force Survey. Our new measure has many desirable properties, including reduced volatility and a better relationship with labour market fundamentals.
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