anticipated monetary policy in canada some new evidence abstract in this note i examine the policy ineffectiveness proposition for canada using monthly income data due to milbourne et al 1988 i find that anticipated monetary policy altered the evolution of real output in canada recent work by ambler and phaneuf 1988 can be used to attribute this result to a purely new keynesian model of the business cycle although this inference is found to be fragile with respect to the choice of the level of significance used in the hypothesis tests

quality and safety standards in the food industry developments and challenges consumer concerns related to food safety scandals and globalization of food production have resulted in a global and interconnected system for the production and distribution of food in the last decade many public and private standards on food safety and quality have been developed as a result of these developments currently there is proliferation of standards worldwide one effect is that in particular companies from developing countries and emerging economies have problems to comply with these standards another important effect is increasing marginal costs of certification and accreditation which also puts pressure on company profits in industrialized countries the combined impacts of these effects ask for strategies to revalue the cost effectiveness of the certification and accreditation system

wage inflation unionization and monopoly power this paper uses panel data from 301 four digit manufacturing industries over the years 1959 to 1980 to examine how market structure affects the wage response to aggregate demand disturbances the authors use a new classical macroeconomic framework in which such shocks are identified with the unexpected component of money growth they find that product market power does not affect the response of wages to such shocks but that unionization does to be specific greater unionization leads to a faster wage response they also find that wages rise equiproportionately with expected money growth i e expected money is neutral copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

world war i and the postwar depression a reinterpretation based on alternative estimates of gnp abstract this paper examines the official commerce department estimates of gross national product for 1909 1928 and suggests that they are far inferior to the less commonly used kendrick gnp estimates the paper then derives a revised version of the kendrick series that alters significantly the representation of annual movements in gnp before 1919 this endorsement of a revised kendrick gnp series in place of the official commerce department estimates before 1929 suggests that aggregate demand movements had much less effect on real output during world war i and the depression of 1921 than is commonly believed

the phillips curve the persistence of inflation and the lucas critique evidence from exchange rate regimes comment we present evidence from the united states and the united kingdom that the persistence of price inflation is significantly higher under managed exchange rate regimes than under gold based fixed exchange rate regimes these differences are also reflected in expectations augmented phillips curves we use a two country macro model with forward looking price setters to demonstrate that higher monetary accommodation of inflation and exchange rate accommodation of inflation differentials increase inflation persistence the evidence does not contradict this hypothesis it supports the hypothesis of forward looking price setters and highlights the empirical significance of the lucas critique jel e31 e42 f33

monetary accommodation exchange rate regimes and inflation persistence stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0013 0133 28199205 29102 3a412 3c461 3amaerra 3e2 0 co 3b2 lthe economic journal is currently published by royal economic society your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals res html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgwed feb 13 07 34 49 2008

money output and prices an empirical study using long term cross country data abstract this paper uses 20 year average data on money output prices and certain other variables from 33 countries to examine the relationships between those variables it finds evidence for a common demand for money function in which the demand for nominal money has a real income and price elasticity of one and a negative but small interest elasticity it also suggests that long term monetary expansion is primarily though not wholly reflected in inflation tests of the rational expectations hypothesis provide at best only weak support for the hypothesis

factor models and time varying parameter framework for forecasting exchange rates and inflation a survey a survey of models used for forecasting exchange rates and inflation reveals that the factor based and time varying parameter or state space models generate superior forecasts relative to all other models this survey also finds that models based on taylor rule and portfolio balance theory have moderate predictive power for forecasting exchange rates the evidence on the use of bayesian model averaging approach in forecasting exchange rates reveals limited predictive power but strong support for forecasting inflation overall the evidence overwhelmingly points to the context of the forecasts relevance of the historical data data transformation choice of the benchmark selected time horizons sample period and forecast evaluation methods as the crucial elements in selecting forecasting models for exchange rate and inflation

disaggregate level evidence on monetary neutrality existing tests of the neutrality hypothesis focus on aggregate level economic activity however failure to examine disaggregate level effects can lead to incorrect inferences concerning anticipated and unanticipated money growth impacts disaggregate level testing of neutrality is limited also receiving inadequate attention is the impact upon test inferences of the use of generated regressors in the widely used two step estimation procedure this research tests neutrality across eleven manufacturing industries and aggregate gnp incorporating a correction for generated regressors into gls estimation the research finds non neutrality of anticipated money at the disaggregate level under two general money forecasting specifications

trade liberalisation and export performance in selected developing countries this article examines the impact of trade liberalisation on export growth for a sample of 22 developing economies the research applies dynamic panel data models based on fixed effects and generali

monetary shocks market structure and administered prices this paper examines interindustry variation in the response of prices to nominal aggregate demand disturbances this subject has been the focus of numerous investigations in recent years 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 17 and 28 a long standing motivation for this attention has been debate over gardiner means s 22 administered price ap thesis which in broad terms seems to imply that cyclical price flexibility diminishes with increases in market power more recently researchers have focused on imperfect competition as a source of price stickiness because of the importance of this mechanism for the emerging new keynesian analysis of business cycles 1 3 6 thus far however the empirical studies on this subject have reported mixed results and the relationship between imperfect competition and price flexibility remains unsettled curiously an alternative to the market power explanation of inter industry variation in cyclical price flexibility has been largely ignored in these past studies even though it lies at the heart of the new classical macro models the lucas 21 supply function lsf which is key to the striking policy results of these models predicts that output will respond more to a demand shockand by implication absolute prices will respond less in those industries with a history of greater variation in their relative demand or price industry level investigation of price movements thus provides a partial test of the lsf which like the ap thesis remains open to question this paper presents evidence on the explanatory power of both the ap and the lsf approaches we begin with a price change equation that can be derived from a standard lsf model as shown by robert gordon 15 an important feature of this specification is its distinction between anticipated and unanticipated money growth we then show that this same price equation can be given an ap interpretation relying principally on recent work of rotemberg and saloner 29 both approaches predict variation across industries in their price response to unanticipated money growth but they offer different explanations of the cause the lsf theory suggests dependence on the industry s relative demand instability the ap models suggest dependence on industry structure evidence on the competing theories is developed from annual price data on 328 four digit

price and output responsiveness to nominal changes under differential information abstract the paper considers how changes in nominal income are transmitted into price and output changes within a setting where the traditional assumption of instantaneous market clearing costless coordination is given up in favour of a more realistic setting where price decisions are made by numerous agents firms acting independently on their private decentralized information the responsiveness of firm specific prices is considered and it is shown how absolute or nominal price rigidity can be explained building this into a theory of the general price level it is proved that heterogenously perceived nominal changes affect the price level less than proportionally moreover it is shown how a phillips curve relation between inflation and output can be rationalized within the model finally the issue of relative price variability is considered and related to misallocation of economic resources under differential information

anticipated monetary policy and real output evidence from latin american countries this paper is an empirical investigation of the effects of anticipated and unanticipated monetary policies on real output for 13 ldcs in latin and central america the well know mishkin econometric procedure is applied to the annual imf date for the decomposition of actual money growth into anticipated and unanticipated components and the evidence of significant relation between anticipated money supply and real output for each country is reported the results derived in this paper thus provide additional empirical support for the validity of the non classical rational expectations macro models of fisher and phelps and taylor

effects of fiscal policies on us agriculture according to the macro rational expectation mre hypothesis only unanticipated macroeconomic policy has impacts on real economic variables and anticipated policy changes have no real impacts this study analysis the effects of the anticipated and unanticipated components of fiscal policy on the us farm real gnp by testing the neutrality and rationality propositions of the mre hypothesis the test results show that both the rationality and neutrality propositions are rejected the empirical findings indicate that the anticipated fiscal policy does have significant effects on farm output examination of a specific sector sheds light on the nature of the market and helps ascertain the resons for the non neutrality

wage growth and the inflation process a multivariate cointegration analysis past empirical analysis of the relationship between wages and prices within the expectations augmented phillips curve model have raised doubts about the effects of labor costs on inflation analysis of the same data used previously reveals the existence of a deterministic linear time component in the wage and price series which past research failed to take into account using the johansen 1988 1992 1994 multivariate cointegration technique the paper provides robust evidence on the consistency of the markup view of the inflation process with the data and concludes that monetary policy should profit from labor costs data in predicting future rates of inflation

theoretical developments in the light of macroeconomic policy and empirical research macroeconomics is surveyed with emphasis on the implications of the new classical and rational expectations critiques for the keynesian paradigm and the role of macro policies at the background are the main macro developments of the 1 970s and 1 980s as well as the specific lessons of recent high chronic inflation processes a synthesis is emerging in which the basic keynesian view of the existence of market and price coordination failures as well as room for pareto improving policy intervention are maintained at the same time the theoretical underpinnings are undergoing substantial change mainly due to a rational expectations reformulation

does anticipated monetary policy matter more evidence this note provides more evidence on whether anticipated monetary policy alters the evolution of real output in the united states the results are shown to be sensitive to the model selection criterion used to choose the design matrix

the history of the phillips curve consensus and bifurcation while the early history of the phillips curve up to 1975 is well known less well understood is the post 1975 fork in the road the left fork developed a theory of policy responses to supply shocks in the context of price stickiness in the non shocked sector its econometric implementation interacts shocks with backward looking inertia the right fork approach emphasizes forward looking expectations that can jump in response to anticipated policy changes the left fork approach is better suited to explaining the postwar us inflation process while the right fork approach is essential for understanding behaviour in economies with unstable macroeconomic environments the history of the phillips curve pc has evolved in two phases before and after 1975 with a widespread consensus about the pre 1975 evolution which is well understood bifurcation begins in 1975 when the pc literature split down two forks of the road with little communication or interaction between the two forks the major contribution of this paper and hence the source of bifurcation in its subtitle is to examine contrast and test the contributions of the two post 1975 forks the pre 1975 history is straightforward and is covered in section i the initial discovery of the negative inflation unemployment relation by phillips popularized by samuelson and solow was followed by a brief period in which policy makers assumed that they could exploit the trade off to reduce unemployment at a small cost of additional inflation then the natural rate revolution of friedman phelps and lucas overturned the policy exploitable trade off in favour of long run monetary neutrality those who had implemented the econometric version of the trade off pc in the 1960s reeled in disbelief when sargent demonstrated the logical failure of their test of neutrality and finally were condemned to the wreckage of keynesian economics by lucas and sargent following the twist of the inflation unemployment correlation from negative in the 1960s to positive in the 1970s the architects of neutrality and the opponents of the keynesian trade off emerged triumphant with two major caveats that their own models based on information barriers were unconvincing and that their core result that business cycles were driven by monetary or price surprises floundered without supporting evidence after 1975 the evolution of the pc literature split in two directions each of which has largely failed to recognize the other s contributions section ii reviews the left fork of the road the revival of the pc trade off in a coherent and integrated dynamic aggregate supply and demand framework that emerged in the late 1970s in econometric tests in theoretical contributions and in intermediate macro textbooks this approach which i have called mainstream is resolutely keynesian because the inflation rate is dominated by persistence and inertia in the form of long lags on past inflation an important difference between the mainstream approach and other post 1975 developments is that the role of past inflation is not limited to the formation of expectations but also includes a pure persistence effect due to fixed duration wage and price contracts and lags between

econometric issues in macroeconomic models with generated regressors the paper critically reviews the literature on the econometric issues raised by the use of generated regressors gr in empirical models the economic rationale for the use of gr is considered with examples being drawn from several macroeconomic examples including new classical macroeconomic ncm models which postulate monetary neutrality various estimation methods are discussed for models which include surprise or unexpected terms and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are investigated drawing upon the work of mcaleer and mckenzie 1991 situations where the typically inefficient two step estimation 2se method will be efficient are highlighted problems of model misspecification and measurement errors are also investigated an empirical section highlights some of the dangers of using uncorrected 2se estimation results through a careful consideration of many recent attempts to test the ncm monetary neutrality hypothesis copyright 1993 by blackwell publishers ltd

unemployment in canada and the united states reduced form unemployment equations containing aggregate demand structural and frictional variables are estimated for canada and the united states post 1981 increases in unemployment rates are explained almost entirely by aggr egate demand variables although structural sectoral variables make i mportant contributions to changes in the gap between the two countrie s unemployment rates for both countries the results support the fo llowing monetarist propositions monetary variables are the prime determinants of the business cycle exogenous investment shocks are typically of minor importance and macro policy has tended to be dest abilizing

on interest rate innovations and anticipated monetary policy abstract in this note i investigate whether anticipated money matters by following mccallum s 1983 suggestion that nominal interest rates be included in a var system estimated on data spanned by a policy of interest rate targeting the evidence is in favour of gordon s 1982 natural rate hypothesis gradual price adjustent model of policy ineffectiveness ambler and phaneuf 1988 have shown the results can be interpreted as evidence in favour of contract based models of the business cycle

price dynamics under imperfect information abstract the paper considers the pricing decision of a monopolist firm having demand and costs exposed to nominal and real shocks which include both permanent and transitory changes the firm obtains information through both price and quantity signals and the price equation is found by use of a filtering technique it is shown that imperfect information implies nominal price smoothing where the price adjusts only partially relative to the past price by incorporating new information observed through price and quantity signals

financial innovations and the interest elasticity of money demand some historical evidence note 1 lntroduction a number of investigations into the difficulties of estimating short run money demand functions recently have suggested that the trouble is linked to changes in the financial market e g see garcia and pak 1979 goldfeld 1976 and simpson and porter 1980 it is argued that these financial innovations have led to a deterioration in the marginal relationship between real money balances and interest rates arguments that financial innovations affect the link between interest rates and money demand are not new indeed this contention is the cornerstone of the much debated theories of gurley and shaw 1960 where a proliferation of money substitutes is hypothesized to increase the interest elasticity of money demand the consequence is a lessening of the fed s ability to affect economic conditions through open market operations since the most dramatic changes in the payments mechanism have occurred during the past twenty years the interest elasticities estimated from recent data should be larger relative to earlier sample period estimates l this finding would support the gurley shaw hypothesis and buttress recent claims that financial innovations have produced a much more interest elastic money demand function unfortunately little empirical work has been done to specifically examine the temporal nature of money demand s interest elasticity the purpose of this paper therefore is to provide empirical evidence on this question 2 we compare the shortand longrun interest elasticities from a money demand equation estimated across the l915 i 1979 iv period 3 our results indicate that the interest elasticity of money

market structure and the effectiveness of monetary policy a cross industry study empirical rejections of the strong form of the new classical macroeconomics at the aggregate economy level leave open the extent to which it is the rational expectations or short run market clearin

the impact of bad writing in economics we find significant style differences between articles written by economists for their professional journals and articles by the same economists in the wall street journal we find no evidence that style influences the professional success of economists which suggests that the private rewards to improving the quality of writing are low indeed each community of scholars has probably adopted a professionally correct writing style from which its members diverge little however scholars do alter their rhetorical style to communicate effectively with audiences other than the professional community this suggests that intra and inter group written communication by economists is efficient

the international economy as a constraint on u s macroeconomic policymaking international economic factors increasingly influence american trade and exchange policy and interdependence also circumscribes the autonomous choice of domestic policies but the growing concern of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd policymakers over the potential for macroeconomic policy coordination to enhance national as well as world welfare implies that international economic relations present opportunities rather than constraints under some circumstances this suggests that understanding domestic economic policy choice within its international context involves not only how policy choices are made within the bounds of international constraints but also when countries might cooperate to modify the constraints themselves this research looks to four important historical cases for information on these questions the first three are the series of cumulating crises in the international monetary system during the 1960s and early 1970s the fourth is the energy supply shock of 1973 and the recession that followed the article describes the process of policy selection in each of these cases contrasting domestic versus international premises for policy choice the economics literature has emphasized the magnitude of domestic welfare gains available from coordinated national economic policies although the cases considered here do not contradict the importance of payoffs they underline the corresponding role of political economic and strategic uncertainty in conditioning elites policy choices

unemployment disequilibrium and the short run phillips curve an econometric approach the paper specifies a disequilibrium model for the aggregate labour market consisting of demand and supply functions for labour an adjustment equation for wages as well as for prices a transactions equation and finally an equation that relates measured unemployment to vacancies and to excess demand the model has a more sophisticated treatment of dynamics than earlier disequilibrium models the parameter estimates and the goodness of fit are satisfactory and the model s implications for the behaviour of several important variables are sensible in particular excess demand estimates computed in various ways are reasonable

rational expectations and price behavior abstract this paper evaluates the role of rational expectations in price setting behavior in india india has a large informal sector where prices are generally flexible since most economic transactions do not take place under formal and fixed contracts empirical tests suggest that prices respond fully to anticipated changes in demand while unanticipated changes affect output furthermore the price equation was found to be consistent with the money demand and output equation in the past the monetary authority in india have not systematically responded to negative output shocks such as those arising from droughts or famines by introducing unanticipated reductions in money growth this policy has been helpful in minimizing output losses and thereby stabilizing prices

forecasting rational expectations and the phillips curve an empirical investigation abstract the rational expectations version of the phillips curve is empirically evaluated for switzerland using a wide variety of specifications it turns out that the results are highly sensitive to measurement of both the natural rate and expectations of nominal variables no reliable phillips curve seems to exist in addition information on the relative quality of different forecasting schemes is obtained for a number of important macroeconomic variables

size persistence and interrelation of nominal and real shocks some evidence from four countries abstract one of the major themes in karl brunner s work is the comparative size persistence and interaction of real and monetary impulses the paper uses a univariate multi state kalman filter to forecast quarterly values of money prices output velocity and exchange rates during the bretton woods and post bretton woods monetary regimes and to compute shocks or impulses vector autoregression is used to relate the shocks and to compare the two regimes several propositions are tested including the phillips curve currency substitution reverse causation and the role of monetary impulses as a cause of fluctuations in output and prices

domestic adjustment to international shocks in japan and the united states economic interdependence complicates domestic policymaking by interposing the decisions of foreigners in the loop that links policy instrument settings to economic outcomes nowhere was this vulnerability to external decisions demonstrated more forcefully even for the world s major economies than by the energy supply shocks of 1973 and 1979 the oil shocks posed challenges that offer unusual insight into the way nations choose policies their severity forced a policy response their unpredictable timing and at least in 1973 unprecedented nature ruled out conventional formulas and brought to the fore explicit policy trade offs this article seeks to explain how policymakers in the world s two major economies responded to these external shocks the analysis successively employs three vantage points system society and state in tracing the sources of domestic adjustment policies it focuses specifically on the extent to which policies accommodated or extinguished each shock s inflationary impulses and on the coherence and consistency with which the executive in each government formulated and pursued particular policy goals a comparison of these four cases illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of increasingly detailed theoretical frameworks for explaining policy choice although the research does not contradict the depiction of the united states and japan in terms of state strength it does underscore the importance of looking beyond formal institutional arrangements to consider how elite policy preferences ambitions and capacities can define the way constraints influence policy

trends random walks and the expectations augmented phillips curve evidence from six countries two major empirical results are reported first it is shown that time series measuring real activity in major industrialized countries contain nonstationarities of the random walk type second it turns out that the estimated influence of unexpected changes in inflation and monetary growth strongly depends on the chosen approach concerning nonstationarity the popular assumption of a deterministic time trend proxying for growth generally yields the hypothesized positive coefficients the influence of nominal surprises however becomes indistinguishable from zero if the respective equations are estimated in stationary differences of real activity variables copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

financial panics the seasonality of the nominal interest rate and the founding of the fed after the founding of the fed in 1914 the frequency of financial panics and the size of the seasonal movements in nominal interest ratesboth declined substantially this paper establishes that the fed by carrying out the seasonal open market policy that eliminated the seasonal in nominal interest rates caused the decrease in the frequency of panics since seasonal movements are anticipated and financial panics are probably real events the results show that an anticipated monetary policy had real effects on the economy copyright 1986 by american economic association

rationality causality and the relation between economic conditions and the popularity of parties an empirical investigation for the federal republic of germany 1971 1982 abstract two questions are discussed using german popularity data from 1971 to 1982 it is asked whether it is true that using time series methods no relation can be found between economic variables and the popularity of parties taking ex post predictions strong evidence is presented that such a relation exists even if usual granger causality tests cannot detect it but is this relation compatible with rational expectations of the electorate this is at best partly the case as the anticipated part of the unemployment rate has a significant impact on the popularities of the two major german parties

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

macroeconomic issues for latin america abstract recent macroeconomic issues in latin america are reviewed with an emphasis on theory topics covered include multiple equilibria from hysteresis or increasing returns exchange rate management and the output and asset market effects of devaluation speculation interest rate management and financial reform government behavior income distribution and growth inertial inflation and heterodox policy shocks and disequilibrium theories

the nairu unemployment and monetary policy this paper examines the precision of conventional estimates of the nairu and the role of the nairu and unemployment in forecasting inflation the authors find that although there is a clear empirical phillips relation the nairu is imprecisely estimated forecasts of inflation are insensitive to the nairu and there are other leading indicators of inflation that are at least as good as unemployment this suggests deemphasizing the nairu in public discourse about monetary policy and instead drawing on a richer variety of leading indicators of inflation