central bank constitutions for federal monetary unions abstract in a monetary union the central bank constitution must distribute the power over monetary policy between the members and the administrative center of the union we compare alternative distributions and evaluate their performance dominance of regional interests always leads to inefficient monetary stabilization policies whether or not dominance of regional interests leads to a higher long run rate of inflation depends on the union s political constitution

macroeconomic interdependence under capital controls abstract this paper studies the international transmission of monetary and fiscal disturbances under capital controls the results are contrasted with those that obtain under perfect capital mobility under perfect capital mobility permanent and unanticipated changes in domestic fiscal and monetary policies have no real effects abroad and the adjustment is instantaneous in contrast under capital controls these disturbances are transmitted abroad and adjustment occurs only over time the dynamic adjustment of the world economy is characterized by a negative co movement of domestic and foreign variables such as consumption the real interest rate and the real exchange rate

detecting potential overbilling in medicare reimbursement via hours worked we propose a novel and easy to implement approach to detect potential overbilling based on the hours worked implied by the service codes which physicians submit to medicare using the medicare part b fee for service ffs physician utilization and payment data in 2012 and 2013 released by the centers for medicare and medicaid services we construct estimates for physicians hours spent on medicare beneficiaries we find that about 2 300 physicians representing about 3 percent of those with 20 or more hours of medicare part b ffs services have billed medicare over 100 hours per week we consider these implausibly long hours

does monetary unification lead to excessive debt accumulation abstract if discretionary monetary policy gives rise to an inflation bias monetary unification boosts the accumulation of public debt the additional debt accumulation harms welfare if governments are sufficiently myopic in the presence of myopic governments debt ceilings play a useful role in avoiding excessive debt accumulation in a monetary union and allowing a conservative independent central bank to focus on price stability with supply shocks monetary unification results in excessive variability of public debt a debt target that constrains stabilization policy helps to prevent this

ppp exchange rate rules macroeconomic in stability and learning in order to maintain competitiveness governments in developing economies seem to have pursued purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate rules by adjusting the nominal devaluation rate in response to real exchange rate deviations from an intermediate target this article shows that these rules are likely to induce macroeconomic instability as they generate sunspot driven fluctuations that are in fact learnable by agents in the expectational stability sense it finds that the existence of these learnable sunspots depends among others on open economy features including the degree of openness and the degree of exchange rate pass through to consumer s import prices

exchange rate rules and macroeconomic stability this paper discusses exchange rate rules in their role as macroeconomic instruments we abstract throughout from the trend part of exchange rate behaviour a crawling peg necessitated by differences in trend inflation and emphasise instead the implications of exchange rate rules in providing flexibility of real wages or in affecting the stability of output or prices

do central banks respond to exchange rate movements a structural investigation abstract we estimate a small scale structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy using bayesian methods our main focus is the conduct of monetary policy in australia canada new zealand and the uk we consider generic taylor type rules where the monetary authority reacts in response to output inflation and exchange rate movements we perform posterior odds tests to investigate the hypothesis whether central banks do target exchange rates the main result of this paper is that the central banks of australia and new zealand do not whereas the bank of canada and the bank of england do include the nominal exchange rate in its policy rule this result is robust for various specification of the policy rule we also find that terms of trade movements do not contribute significantly to domestic business cycles

oil prices inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated var model for the g 7 countries sharp increases in the price of oil are generally seen as a major contributor to business cycle asymmetries moreover the very recent highs registered in the world oil market are causing concern about possible slowdowns in the economic performance of the most developed countries in this paper a structural cointegrated var model has been considered for the g 7 countries in order to study the direct effects of oil price shocks on output and prices and the reaction of monetary variables to external shocks our results can be summarized as follows i a stationary money demand as suggested by the classic theory of money can be identified for most countries ii according to the estimated coefficients of the structural part of the model for all countries except japan and u k the null hypothesis of an influence of oil prices on the inflation rate cannot be rejected inflation rate shocks are transmitted to the real economy by increasing interest rates iii impulse response analysis suggests for most countries the existence of an instantaneous temporary effect of oil price innovations on prices iv impulse response functions indicate different monetary policy reactions to inflationary and growth shocks v the simulation exercises directed to estimate the total impact of the 1990 oil price shock indicate that for some countries u s a significant part of the effects of the oil price shock is due to the monetary policy reaction function for other countries canada france and italy however the total impact is offset at least in part by an easing of monetary conditions

exchange rate based stabilization with endogenous fiscal response abstract this paper studies the dynamics of inconsistent exchange rate based stabilization policy a policy that fixes the exchange rate without an underlying fiscal adjustment to ensure that the exchange rate policy is sustainable in the long run in a model where the perception that exchange rate policy temporarily leads to an initial expansion in consumption that generates an increase in tax revenues large enough to eliminate the ex ante fiscal deficit therefore an ex ante inconsistent stabilization program displays ex post all the features of a fiscally consistent one i e a fixed exchange rate and no fiscal deficit in contrast to the standard results where the inconsistency between fiscal and exchange rate policy leads to a steady loss of international reserves and culminates in a krugman type balance of payments crisis this model predicts that along the path towards the balance of payments crisis the economy displays no fiscal deficit and enjoys increasing international reserves

real exchange rate targeting and inflation in turkey an empirical analysis with policy credibility abstract in this paper we make an empirical investigation into the conflict among objectives under a real exchange rate policy i e between the trade balance and domestic inflation this occurs when the nominal exchange rate is managed to achieve a certain level of the real exchange rate in order to main external competitiveness our empirical analysis draws on the turkish case whereby the exchange rate has been the key policy instrument since the 1980s the results from the simulation experiments with a well defined macromodel where the devaluation expectations are explicitly considered indicate moderate inflationary consequences of a real exchange rate policy based on the relative purchasing power parity ppp rule in turkey moreover a real exchange rate appreciation is found to be contractionary these are common characteristics of the demand determined output case another major conclusion is that the exchange rate policy can provide an anchor for price stability only if it is credible

time consistent collection of optimal seigniorage a unifying framework this paper reviews the existing literature on the time consistency problem of seigniorage collection when monetary policy is determined by optimal taxation considerations it develops a unifying accounting framework and suggests a general measure for seigniorage which encompasses the standard measures employed in the literature in addition the ex ante optimal solution to the optimal taxation problem is derived and interpreted in relation to the ramsey principle we show that the different recommendations of the public finance literature i e the friedman rule of optimal deflation moderately positive inflation and seigniorage maximizing inflation are specific solutions to the optimal taxation problem the paper continues with a formal illustration of the time consistency problem of the ex ante optimal policy and the characterization of the time consistent solution under discretion as possible solutions to the time consistency problem we consider reputational forces institutional reforms that establish central bank independence and specific ways of asset and debt management in particular it is formally shown that a modified version of the asset and debt management scheme suggested by persson persson and svensson is not only necessary but also sufficient for optimality although this did not hold in their model

stabilization with liberalization an evaluation of ten years of chile s experience with free market policies 1973 1983 the recent post 1973 economic experience of chile has attracted considerable attention both from professional economists and from the media most observers have been particularly impressed by the sharp contrasts observed in chile in such a short period of time for example in 1973 chile had one of the highest rates of inflation in the world over 600 whereas in 1981 it experienced one of the lowest rates of inflation 9 5 also in 1975 real gnp declined by 12 9 but during 1977 80 real gnp grew at an average rate of 8 5 per annum in 1982 however the country faced a new recession with real gnp dropping by 14 5 in 1983 the gnp was reduced further by 2 3 the fact that these episodes developed while the military government was actively pursuing free market oriented policies that greatly liberalized the economy adds considerable interest to the chilean case 2 the year 1973 marked an important turning point in chile s economic and political history in september of that year the military took over the government from president salvador allende and a period of dramatic economic changes began chile was transformed from an economy isolated from the rest of the world with strong government intervention into a liberalized world integrated economy where market forces were left free to guide most of the economy s decisions the period 1973 81 was characterized by important achievements inflation was greatly reduced the government deficit was virtually eliminated the economy went through a dramatic liberalization of its foreign sector tariffs were reduced to a uniform 10 level and prices including interest rates were full liberalized probably one of the most interesting aspects of the chilean economy during this period is that major

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

the ecb s non standard monetary policy measures the role of institutional factors and financial structure this paper aims to make two contributions to review the ecb s non standard monetary policy measures in response to the financial and sovereign debt crisis against the background of the institutional framework and financial structure of the euro area and to interpret this response from a flow of funds perspective the paper highlights how the ecb s non standard measures are motivated differently from quantitative easing policies as a complement to standard interest rate decisions rather than a substitute they aim at supporting their effective transmission to the economy rather than at delivering additional monetary stimulus directly the flow of funds analysis proposes an interpretation of central banks crisis response as reflecting their capacity to act as the ultimate sector that can take on leverage when other sectors are under pressure to deleverage it also provides examples for tracing the impact of non standard measures across different sectors and markets copyright 2012 oxford university press

political influence on the central bank international evidence political influence on the central bank is measured bere by looking at the probability that a central bank governor will be replaced shortly after a political change of government the governor changes about half the time witbin six months of a nonconstitutional or other radical change of government a military coup or a restoration of democracy the governor is much less likely to change within six months following a routine change in the head of government about one fourth of the time in developing countries and one tenth in industrial countries these indicators vary across countries and correlate statistically with inflation and its variability and with real growth and real interest rates differences in the vulnerability of the central bank to political instability in political instability itself and in central bank turnover in nonpolitical periods seem to be a major part of the explanation for why developing countries have on average higher and more variable inflation than industrial countries do

mexico s balance of payments crisis a chronicle of a death foretold this paper claims that the roots of mexico s balance of payments crisis are found in the prevailing high degree of capital mobility and financial globalization under these circumstances shifts in foreign capital flows and anticipation of a banking system bailout may produce large imbalances between stocks of financial assets and foreign reserves threatening the sustainability of currency pegs econometric analysis suggests that half of mexico s reserve losses could be accounted for by these phenomena large financial imbalances are also fertile ground for self fulfilling prophesy crises which lead devaluations to produce deep recessions these difficulties can be partly remedied by appropriate policies

econometric testing of purchasing power parity in less developed countries fixed and flexible exchange rate regime experiences we investigate the purchasing power parity ppp hypothesis for 16 less developed countries ldcs from all over the world during their fixed and flexible exchange rate experiences over the period 1957 01 1999 12 the main contribution of this article to the empirical literature on ppp is that our study is the first to consider ppp hypothesis on alternative exchange rate regimes for ldcs the bilateral exchange rates of ldcs and the united states and their respective price levels are considered three different time series methodologies are employed unit root tests engle granger 1987 cointegration technique and johansen multivariate var methodology 1988 the cointegration techniques improve the results which allows the examination of the more frequent long run relationship between relative prices and nominal exchange rates nevertheless using each of econometric techniques we find only a few and a nearly equal evidence in favour of ppp under the alternative regimes in ldcs hence the main conc

the beveridge nelson decomposition of economic time series another economical computational method abstract this note describes a simple and an economical computational procedure for generating the permanent cyclical decomposition of economic time series proposed by beveridge and nelson 1981 our procedure is a more complete alternative than the method suggested by cuddington and winters 1987

centralised wage setting inflation contracts and the optimal choice of central banker the paper examines the appropriate design of central banking institutions in an economy in which the nominal wage is set by an inflation averse monopoly union as a positive mark up over its market clearing value the analysis considers both the optimal choice of central banker and the potential role for a linear inflation contract the optimal set of arrangements is a central banker who attaches less significance to inflation than does society combined with an inflation contract where the value of the contract parameter is related to the union s degree of inflationaversion following the important contribution of rogoff 1985 the appointment of a conservative central banker has been widely accepted as a potential albeit partial solution to the time inconsistency problem associated with discretionary policy making in placing a greater weight on inflation than does the government and society as a whole in the setting of monetary policy the central bank s temptation to create inflation surprises is reduced this then leads to a lower inflation rate in equilibrium than would otherwise prevail whilst in rogoff s stochastic framework this reduction in the inflationary bias has to be weighed against an increase in output variability the appropriate choice of central banker ensures a net improvement in welfare an important feature of rogoff s model is the assumption of an atomistic labour market in which nominal wages embodied in single period contracts reflect interaction between agents who hold no market power such a representation of the labour market also characterises most subsequent extensions of rogoff s analysis e g lohmann 1992 and waller 1992 however a number of recent papers in considering the time inconsistency issue have employed the assumption of unionised wage setting assuming either an allencompassing monopoly union or alternatively a number of individual unions each of which has a non negligible impact on macroeconomic variables examples include agell and ysander 1993 bleaney 1996 cubitt 1992 1995 horn and persson 1988 hutchison and walsh 1998 and skott 1997 these contributions have examined the implications of the assumed labour market imperfection from a variety of perspectives but only those of bleaney and skott directly consider its consequences for the appropriate specification of central bank objectives in what follows we explore the significance of unionised wage setting for

temporary controls on capital inflows abstract during the past decade a number of countries imposed capital controls that had two distinguishing features they were asymmetric in that they were designed principally to discourage capital inflows and they were temporary this paper studies formally the consequences of these policies calibrates their potential effectiveness and assesses their welfare implications in an environment in which the level of capital inflows can be sub optimal in addition motivated by the fact that these types of controls have often been left in place after the dissipation of the shock that lead to the controls being implemented the paper evaluates the welfare cost of procrastination in removing these types of controls

targeting the real exchange rate theory and evidence abstract this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of policies aimed at setting a more depreciated level of the real exchange rate an intertemporal optimizing model suggests that in the absence of changes in fiscal policy a more depreciated level of the real exchange rate can only be attained temporarily this can be achieved by means of higher inflation and or higher real interest rates depending on the degree of capital mobility evidence for brazil chile and colombia supports the model s prediction that undervalued real exchange rates are associated with higher inflation

evaluation of currency regimes the unique role of sudden stops this paper tackles two established puzzles in international macroeconomics literature the first is the lack of systematic differences in the macroeconomic performance across exchange rate regimes the second is the absence of a clear empirical relationship between macroeconomic performance and capital account liberalization we suggest that these negative findings may be due to empirical methods that fail to account for a latent economic crisis state influenced by exchange rate and capital account regimes and to allow that latent variable to influence the growth effects of policy regimes in practice we model and estimate the latent state of the economy as a crisis probability our proposed framework of analysis allows exchange rate and capital market liberalization regimes to have both a direct effect on short term growth and an indirect effect on growth that is channelled through their effects on the crisis probability the empirical decomposition of the total effect into two conflicting effects helps resolve the puzzles assaf razin and yona rubinstein

comparing the welfare costs and initial dynamics of alternative inflation stabilization policies abstract this paper uses calibrated versions of a sticky price currency substitution model to compare the initial dynamics and welfare costs of three types of stabilization program exchange rate based erb money based mb and money based with initial reliquefication mbr erb and mbr programs are found to induce an initial expansion in real activity whereas mb programs are initially contractionary the welfare gains of eliminating high inflation are significant under permanent erb and mbr programs but small under permanent mb programs in addition temporary mb programs are shown to be much more disruptive than temporary erb or mbr programs these results provide an explanation for why mb programs are so rarely implemented and suggest that empirical studies that fail to distinguish mb from mbr programs are likely to be biased toward finding that stabilizations are always expansionary regardless of the nominal anchor

central bank independence and monetary control ing from details these conclusions imply that inflation is lower the higher is cbi and that given independence countries that pre announce monetary policy have even lower rates of inflation furthermore there is no evidence that cbi retards growth or investment as a matter of fact for ldcs the evidence points in the opposite direction low independence is associated with lower growth and investment some economists feel that excessive independence may interfere with the potential stabilisatory function of monetary policy since fluctuations in the growth rate of the economy are found to be unrelated to cbi this does not appear to be the case iii commitment via central bank independence and

the competitive externalities and the optimal seignorage this study analyzes the inflation tax in an economy with several competing decisionmakers who can effectively print more money via the central bank the author derives the sequential rational expectation equilibrium and shows that the presence of competing decisionmakers increases the inflation rate and may put the economy on the wrong side of the inflation tax laffer curve the analysis is interpreted for a country consisting of several states or provinces where the centralized government system is weak similar results apply to the case of competing ministers in an economy where the central bank is weak copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

central bank intervention exchange rate regime and the purchasing power parity motivated by the argument that central bank intervention leads to non linear exchange rate adjustment processes we examine purchase power parity ppp by applying quantile unit root tests to the exchange rates of the new taiwan dollar ntd vis a vis seven asian currencies we show that exchange rate regime matters in determining whether ppp holds while ppp holds overwhelmingly during the period when the ntd is under the fixed exchange rate regime it is present only for some exchange rates during the managed floating rate regime for exchange rates exhibiting mean reversion the reversion occurs mainly when the shocks are large in contrast to conclusion in the literature our test results show little evidence of asymmetric mean reversion between positive and negative shocks

monetary union without fiscal coordination may discipline policymakers abstract with benevolent policymakers and fiscal leadership monetary unification reduces inflation taxes and public spending these disciplining effects of a monetary union which become stronger if the number of participants in the union increases are likely to raise welfare two types of arrangements are considered for the union s common central bank ccb making the ccb more conservative and imposing an inflation target on the ccb in contrast to the results of svensson 1997 svensson l e o 1997 optimal inflation targets conservative central banks and linear inflation contracts american economic review 87 98 114 an optimally designed conservative ccb may outperform inflation targeting finally we find that fiscal coordination offsets the disciplining effects of monetary unification hence subsidiarity in fiscal policymaking may enhance welfare

nominal interest rates consumption booms and lack of credibility a quantitative examination abstract exchange rate based stabilization programs in chronic inflation countries have often been accompanied by an initial expansion of private consumption followed by a contraction this consumption cycle has been attributed to lack of credibility in the sense that the public views the reduction in the devaluation rate as temporary this paper assesses the quantitative relevance of the temporariness hypothesis by comparing the predictions of a simple model to the actual figures for seven major programs the paper concludes that nominal interest rates must fall substantially for the temporariness hypothesis to account for an important fraction of the observed consumption booms

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union