the effect of inflation targeting on the behavior of expected inflation evidence from an 11 country panel abstract inflation targets were introduced in the 1990s in australia canada new zealand sweden and the united kingdom change in the behavior of expected inflation in the five targeting countries is measured in a panel that includes six non targeting countries france germany italy the netherlands japan and the united states the level of expected inflation in targeting countries falls after the announcement of targets with controls for country effects year effects ongoing inflation reduction and the business cycle neither the variability of expected inflation nor the average absolute forecast error falls after the announcement of targets with controls for the level and variability of past inflation both targeting and non targeting countries experience unexpected disinflation

would helicopter money be spent new evidence for the netherlands according to some economists central banks should use helicopter money to boost inflation expectations based on a survey among dutch households we examine whether respondents would spend the

central bank transparency and cross border banking abstract we analyze the effect of central bank transparency on cross border bank activities based on a panel gravity model for cross border bank claims for 21 home and 47 destination countries from 1998 to 2010 we find strong empirical evidence that a rise in central bank transparency in the destination country on average increases cross border claims using interaction models we find that the positive effect of central bank transparency on cross border claims is only significant if the central bank is politically independent and operates in a stable economic environment central bank transparency and credibility are thus considered complements by banks investing abroad

the variable rate of growth effect in the life cycle saving model the rate of growth in real gnp g affects the aggregate saving rate positively in life cycle saving models this rate of growth effect is invariably estimated as the coefficient of g in the saving function we show that other determinants of the saving rate influence the rate of growth effect in other words the rate of growth effect is not constant specifically the real rate of return on financial assets and the population dependency ratio determine the timing of saving over the life cycle and hence alter the rate of growth effect the dependency ratio also has an effect on the saving rate which is independent of g because it together with the foreign saving rate determines the level of saving over the life cycle

optimal monetary policy and transparency under informational frictions this paper examines the optimal monetary policy and central bank transparency in an economy where firms set prices under informational frictions the economy is subject to two types of shocks determining the efficient output level and firms desired markups to minimize the welfare reducing output gap and price dispersion between firms the central bank controls firms incentives and expectations by using a monetary instrument and disclosing information on the realized shocks this paper shows that an optimal policy comprises the disclosure of a linear combination of the two shocks and the adjustment of monetary instruments contingent on the disclosed information

age structure and inflation a wicksellian interpretation of the oecd data wicksell s cumulative inflation process is founded on the separation of investment and saving decisions the demographic age structure influences the aggregate of both these decisions and therefor

do more open economies have bigger governments another look abstract we reconsider the evidence of a positive relationship between openness and the size of government recently established by rodrik rodrik d 1998 why do more open economies have bigger governments journal of political economy 106 997 1032 and others while the existing literature focuses on expenditure based measures of government we consider non budgetary measures such as government ownership of enterprises price controls asset expropriation each of these may have little impact on government expenditures yet can make the role of government sizable we demonstrate that the scope of government is much larger in less open economies when considering non budgetary measures additionally we show that higher levels of non budgetary government are positively correlated with trade barriers finally we provide further evidence on the hypothesis that larger governments provide social insurance in open economies subject to terms of trade shocks although we find that greater terms of trade risk is weakly associated with larger government in all forms these interventions include price controls and greater risk of asset expropriation which are hard to reconcile with a pure insurance motive

openness country size and government size additional evidence from a large cross country panel abstract a body of influential research has suggested that there is a negative association between country size and government size and between country size and openness and these may account for the positive association between openness and government size estimation of several models from 41 year panel data for over 150 countries indicates that while pooled ols estimates support the foregoing scenario when cross country heterogeneity is taken into consideration through the fixed effects format there is little evidence of a negative association of country size with either government size or openness therefore it does not seem likely that positive association between openness and government size arises due to the mediating role of country size

the effects of monetary policy news and surprises there is substantial agreement in the monetary policy literature over the effects of exogenous monetary policy shocks the shocks that are investigated however almost exclusively represent unanticipated changes in policy which surprise the private sector and which are typically found to have a delayed and sluggish effect on output in this paper we estimate a new keynesian model that incorporates news about future policies to try to disentangle the anticipated and unanticipated components of policy shocks the paper shows that the conventional estimates confound two distinct effects on output an effect due to unanticipated or surprise shocks which is smaller and more short lived than the response usually obtained in the literature and a large delayed and persistent effect due to anticipated policy shocks or news news shocks play a larger role in influencing the business cycle than unanticipated policy shocks although the overall fraction of economic fluctuations that can be attributed to monetary policy remains limited

is the mpc s voting record informative about future uk monetary policy it is shown that the voting record of the monetary policy committee of the bank of england helps predict future policy rate changes this result is robust to the inclusion of market participants expectations as measured by the slope of the term structure of money market rates and interest rate futures moreover expectations seem to adjust to the information contained in the voting record which suggests that publishing the minutes of mpc meetings increases the transparency of monetary policy

federal reserve information and the behavior of interest rates this paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public by examining federal reserve and commercial inflation forecasts it demonstrates that the federal reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters it also shows that monetary policy actions provide signals of the federal reserve s information and that commercial forecasters modify their forecasts in response to those signals these findings may explain why long term interest rates typically rise in response to shifts to tighter monetary policy jel e52 e43 d82 asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public is a phenomenon that is often posited but rarely tested numerous models of central bank behavior for example show that the existence of asymmetric information has important implications for the effectiveness of policy and the consequences of dynamic inconsistency yet there

inflation expectations as a policy tool abstract we assess the prospects for central banks using inflation expectations as a policy tool for stabilization purposes we review recent work on how expectations of agents are formed and how they affect their economic decisions empirical evidence suggests that inflation expectations of households and firms affect their actions but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear especially for firms two additional limitations prevent policy makers from being able to actively manage inflation expectations first available surveys of firms expectations are systematically deficient which can only be addressed through the creation of large nationally representative surveys of firms second neither households nor firms expectations respond much to monetary policy announcements in low inflation environments we provide suggestions for how monetary policy makers could pierce this veil of inattention through new communication strategies as well as the potential pitfalls to trying to do so

age structure and trade openness an empirical investigation this study focuses on the relationship between age structure and trade openness we hypothesise that a higher share of the working age population in the total population increases trade openness because the dependent population tends to spend more than the working age population on non tradable goods such as education and medical services we estimate the effects of age structure on trade openness using panel data for 85 countries from 1991 to 2010 the empirical results show that the share of the working age population has a positive effect on trade openness an increase in the share of the working age population is considered to be one factor that contributed to an increase in trade openness in the sample period

productivity growth transparency and monetary policy abstract this study examines whether central bank transparency about views of future productivity growth contributes to stabilizing macroeconomic fluctuations in a standard new keynesian model the central bank and private agents make their subjective estimates on the persistence of productivity growth in this situation if private agents believe that the central bank s projections include forecast errors on future productivity growth these beliefs can destabilize private agents own expectations because the central bank s forecast errors may lead to policy mistakes in the future consequently central bank transparency does not necessarily stabilize the variations of the output gap and inflation rate the central bank should respond strongly to the inflation rate if the impact of transparency is uncertain

does inflation targeting anchor long run inflation expectations evidence from the u s uk and sweden we investigate the extent to which inflation expectations have been more firmly anchored in the united kingdom a country with an explicit inflation target than in the united states a country with no such target using the difference between far ahead forward rates on nominal and inflation indexed bonds as a measure of compensation for expected inflation and inflation risk at long horizons we show that far ahead forward inflation compensation in the u s exhibits substantial volatility especially at low frequencies and displays a highly significant degree of sensitivity to economic news similar patterns are evident in the uk prior to 1997 when the bank of england was not independent but have been strikingly absent since the bank of england gained independence in 1997 our findings are further supported by comparisons of dispersion in longer run inflation expectations of professional forecasters and by evidence from sweden another inflation targeting country with a relatively long history of inflation indexed bonds our results support the view that an explicit and credible inflation target helps to anchor the private sector s views regarding the distribution of long run inflation outcomes jel e31 e52 e58

trade openness and government size abstract we examine whether trade openness influences government size using panel data we find no evidence of a positive relationship rather causality tests show that larger government size leads to lower openness the opposite of what rodrik rodrik dani 1998 why do more open economies have bigger governments journal of political economy 106 997 1032 hypothesized

the relation between narrative and money market indicators of monetary policy this paper studies the relation between narrative based indicators of monetary policy and widely used money market indicators of monetary policy three principal findings emerge first changes in monetary policy as measured by the narrative based policy indices are associated with persistent changes in the levels of m2 and the monetary base in contrast changes in the narrative policy indicators lead to transitory changes in short term interest rates nonborrowed reserves and the spread between the six month commercial paper rate and the three month treasury bill rate third these findings are generally robust across different narrative based policy indices

market set up in advance of federal reserve policy rate decisions textabstractthis paper considers the uncertainty associated with upcoming federal open market committee fomc announcements and the extent to which participants in the fed funds futures market prepare for such announcements before they actually occur we demonstrate that markets set up well in advance of known announcement days going back as far as six months prior to an fomc meeting as a result there is often less variation in fed funds futures prices in the period immediately preceding an fomc announcement despite greater volume of activity as the market has already incorpo rated anticipated signals we find that macro announcements and central bank officials speeches and congressional testimony are of comparable importance in addition while macro announcements have stronger effects when they are released during the fed s blackout period congressional testimony is more important when it coincides with days when important macro variables are released

openness country size and government abstract this paper shows that smaller countries have a larger share of public consumption in gdp and are also more open to trade these empirical observations are consistent with recent theoretical models explaining country formation and break up and may account for the observed positive empirical relationship between trade openness and government size

optimal degrees of transparency in monetary policymaking den meisten akademikern und politischen entscheidungstragern zufolge ist transparenz in der geldpolitik wunschenswert ich untersuche diese behauptung anhand eines kleinen theoretischen models das das vorausschauende verhalten des privaten sektors hervorhebt transparenz erleichtert es denjenigen die preise festsetzen auf die kunftigen geldpolitischen absichten der zentralbank zu schliesen wodurch die laufende inflation starker auf stabilitatspolitische masnahmen reagiert dies fuhrt dazu dass die zentralbank sich eher auf die inflation als auf die stabilisierung der produktionslucke konzentriert in diesem fall kann transparenz negative folgen haben sie kann sich sogar als eine die geldpolitik verzerrende zwangsjacke herausstellen wenn die zentralbank sich stabilitatspolitischer glaubwurdigkeit erfreut und eine aktive monetare stabilisierungspolitik benotigt wird

does foreign exchange intervention matter the portfolio effect until recently there was an unusual degree of consensus among economists that intervention by central banks in the foreign exchange market did not offer an effective or lasting instrument for affecting the exchange rate at least not independently of monetary policy this consensus was largely shared among policymakers and participants in the financial markets as well the 1982 g 7 economic summit at versailles commissioned a study of intervention known as the jurgenson report which found that the effects were small and transitory at most we think that the time is ripe for new statistical testing of the question many policymakers and foreign exchange traders believe that the intervention operations that have taken place since the plaza agreement of september 1985 have had an effect especially when operations are coordinated moreover the theoretical case against the effectiveness of intervention is not as clear as a reading of the economics literature might suggest the academic literature is predicated on the distinction between intervention operations that are sterilized and those that are allowed to affect the money supply we study the intervention operations that actually took place between 1982 and 1988 regardless of whether they were sterilized however we do begin in section i with a review of the issues involved 2 there are two possible channels through which intervention whether sterilized or not can influence the foreign exchange rate the portfolio and the expectations channels intervention can even if sterilized influence exchange rates through the portfolio channel provided foreign and domestic bonds are considered imperfect substitutes in investors portfolios intervention operations that for example increase the current relative supply of mark to dollar assets which private investors are obliged to accept into their portfolios will force a decrease in the relative price of mark assets 3 intervention can also influence exchange rates regardless of whether foreign and domestic bonds are imperfect substitutes through the expectations channel the public information that central banks are intervening in support of a currency or are planning to intervene in the future may under certain conditions cause speculators to expect an increase in the price of that currency in the future speculators react to this information by buying the currency today bringing about the change in the exchange rate today in sections ii and iii we describe the econometric problems that arise in the standard portfolio balance estimation equation we derive an alternative portfolio balance dominguez kennedy school of government harvard university 79 j f kennedy street cambridge ma 02138 frankel department of economics university of california 787 evans hall berkeley ca 94720 we thank three anonymous referees for valuable comments and suggestions julia marsh and julia lowell for research assistance and franz scholl at the bundesbank jean pierre roth at the swiss national bank and officials at the u s treasury and the board of governors of the federal reserve system for making the daily intervention data available 1many of the econometric results finding little or no effect were reported in kenneth s rogoff 1984 and dale w henderson and stephanie sampson 1983 2for authoritative statements see henderson 1984 or maurice obstfeld 1990 3the exchange rate reaction to an increase in the relative supply of outside foreign assets may be reduced if there is an increase in their expected rate of return that induces a corresponding increase in demand

monetary policy in the media just like private companies depend crucially on their ability to reach customers policymakers must communicate with private agents to be successful and much of this communication is channeled through the media this is especially true for central banks which need to build credibility among the general public this paper analyses how favorably the print media report about the european central bank s ecb monetary policy decisions favorableness is inter alia influenced by the amount of information communicated by the ecb there are however also indications of a critical monitoring role of the media which reports more negatively when inflation exceeds the inflation target

private or public school advantage evidence from 40 countries using pisa 2012 mathematics abstractit is known that in most countries private school students outperform students in public schools in international assessments however the empirical literature recognizes that assessing the true effect of private school attendance requires addressing selection and sorting issues on both observabland unobservables the existing empirical evidence on the private school effect mostly covers oecd and latin american countries with little evidence on other parts of the world there is recent emerging country specific evidence doubting the existence of a private school advantage i use pisa 2012 data for mathematics and two different methodologies to derive baseline and bias corrected estimates of the private dependent and independent school effect for 40 countries a robust private school advantage is found only in a handful of countries public schools generally perform as well as private subsidized schools and outperform independent schools accounting for both peer effects and selection is necessa

monetary policy signaling and movements in the term structure of interest rates this paper examines how various monetary policy signals such as repo rate changes inflation reports speeches and minutes from monetary policy meetings affect the term structure of interest rates we find that unexpected movements in the short end of the yield curve are mainly driven by unexpected changes in the repo rate however published inflation reports and speeches also have some impact on short rates speeches are found to be a more important determinant for the longer end of the term structure our conclusion is that central bank communication is an essential part of the conduct of monetary policy

stale forward guidance quarterly central bank projections regarding future interest rate decisions may become stale when new information enters the market using data from new zealand we find the predicted time varying and state dependent effects of interest rate projections on market expectations and uncertainty

trade surpluses and life cycle saving behaviour abstract the national income account identity and the life cycle theory of consumption together imply that the current account should be a function of the age structure a country with a high proportion of young and retired should have current account deficits using a panel of 84 countries we find empirical support for this hypothesis

the long run relationship between openness and government size evidence from bounds test the bounds test is applied to determine the existence of a level relationship between government size openness terms of trade volatility and external risk using time series data from australia canada england norway sweden and the usa bounds test results show that the existence of a long run relationship in the usa and canada but not in any of the other countries long run parameters are estimated using both autoregressive distributed lag and fm ols procedures results vary from country to country with some evidence that government size is significantly affected by openness and terms of trade volatility however contrary to argument and evidence developed using cross section data empirical evidence presented in this paper show that the size of the government has not changed to mitigate the effect of increased income risks associated with greater openness

miracles and debacles in defence of trade openness the central theme of this paper is that sustained rapid growth cannot be achieved without rapid growth in trade a review of the experience during the past four decades offers virtually no examples of countries achieving sustained rapid growth called miracles in this paper without simultaneously experiencing sustained rapid growth in trade in the presence of low or high but declining barriers to trade simultaneously the claim that opening to trade leads to sustained income losses is unfounded a review of the experience of the countries that have faced stagnation or declining per capita incomes on a long term basis called debacles in this paper reveals no connection to a sustained surge in imports

a theory of ambiguity credibility and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information this paper develops a positive theory of credibility ambiguity and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information the monetary policymaker maximizes his own politically motivated objective function that is positively related to economic stimulation through monetary surprises and negatively related to monetary growth the relative importance he assigns to each target shifts stochastically through time his current preference trade off is known to him but not to the public when choosing the state contingent path of money growth for the present and the future the policymaker compares the benefits from current stimulation with the costs associated with higher future inflation expectations current monetary growth conveys information to the public about future money growth because there is persistence in the policymaker s objectives although expectations are rational information is imperfect because monetary control procedures are imprecise as a result the public cannot correctly distinguish persistent changes of emphasis on different policy objectives from transitory monetary control errors the public becomes aware of changes gradually by observing past monetary growth credibility is defined in terms of the speed with which the public recognizes changes in the objectives of the policymaker credibility is lower the noisier monetary control and the more stable the objectives of the policymaker looser monetary control and a higher degree of time preference on the part of the policymaker induce him to produce higher and more variable monetary growth when the policymaker is free to determine the accuracy of monetary control he does not always choose the most effective control available in spite of the fact that monetary surprises always have an expected value of zero the reason is that ambiguous control procedures enable the policymaker to generate positive surprises when he cares more than on average about economic stimulation he leaves the inevitable negative surprises for periods in which he cares more about inflation prevention this result provides an explanation for the fed s preference for ambiguity recently documented by goodfriend 1986 the policymaker is more likely to pick more ambiguous control procedures the more uncertain his objectives and the higher his time preference the paper also provides a theoretical underpinning for the well documented crosscountry positive correlation between the level and the variability of inflation

is the central bank s publication of economic forecasts influential abstract we examine how a central bank s economic forecasts affect forecasts by professional forecasters and vice versa results show that while central bank forecasts are not significantly influenced by those of professional forecasters the latter are however notably affected by the former

monetary policy rules based on real time data this paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules using taylor s rule as an example i demonstrate that real time policy recommendations differ considerably from those obtained with ex post revised data further estimated policy reaction functions based on ex post revised data provide misleading descriptions of historical policy and obscure the behavior suggested by information available to the federal reserve in real time these results indicate that reliance on the information actually available to policy makers in real time is essential for the analysis of monetary policy rules

monetary transmission mechanism in central and eastern europe surveying the surveyable this paper surveys recent advances in empirical studies of the monetary transmission mechanism mtm with special attention to central and eastern europe cee our results indicate that the strength of the exchange rate pass through substantially declined over time mainly due to a fall in inflation rates and to some extent due to the so called composition effect the asset price channel is weak and is likely to remain weak because of shallow stock and private bond markets and because of low stock and bond holdings of domestic household house prices may become an exception with higher levels mortgage lending and with high owner occupancy ratios while the credit channel could be a powerful channel of monetary transmission as new funds raised on capital markets are close to zero in cee it is actually not as both commercial banks and non financial corporations can escape domestic monetary conditions by borrowing from their foreign mother companies the moderately good news is however that those banks and firms are influenced by monetary policy in the euro area because their parent institutions are themselves subjected to the credit channel in the euro area

demography national savings and international capital flows this paper addresses the relationship between age distribution national savings and the current account balance the results point to substantial demographic effects with increases in both the youth and old age dependency ratios associated with lower savings rates they also point to differential effects on savings and investment and thus to a role for demography in determining the current account balance the estimated demographic effect on the current account balance exceeds 6 percent of gdp over the last three decades for a number of countries and given expected demographic trends is likely to be substantially larger over the coming decades copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

communication by central bank committee members different strategies same effectiveness the paper assesses the communication strategies of the federal reserve the bank of england and the european central bank and their effectiveness we find that the effectiveness of communication is not independent from the decision making process the paper shows that the federal reserve has been pursuing a highly individualistic communication strategy amid a collegial approach to decision making while the bank of england is using a collegial communication strategy and highly individualistic decision making the european central bank ecb has chosen a collegial approach both in its communication and in its decision making assessing these strategies we find that predictability of policy decisions and the responsiveness of financial markets to communication are equally good for the federal reserve and the ecb this suggests that there may not be a single best approach to designing a central bank communication strategy

talking heads the effects of ecb statements on the euro dollar exchange rate abstract this paper studies the reaction of the conditional mean and volatility of the euro dollar exchange rate to statements by european central bank and national central bank officials we focus on comments on monetary policy and the external value of the euro we find that the bundesbank has dominated the news coverage we conclude that ecb statements have mainly influenced conditional volatility in some cases there are effects of statements on the conditional mean of the euro dollar exchange rate efforts to talk up the euro have generally not been successful there is also evidence of asymmetric reactions to news

effects of explicit fomc policy rate guidance on interest rate expectations we quantify the impact of explicit fomc policy rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound on eurodollar interest rate futures we find that they significantly reduced implied interest rates and led to a flattening of the yield curve

communication and monetary policy recent trends toward greater central bank independence and the adoption of formal inflation targeting by several countries have served to emphasize the importance of communication policy in this paper we explore some of the economic effects of public information that arise whenever public information serves the dual role of conveying fundamental information as well as serving as a focal point for better coordination more precise public information is a double edged tool while it is very effective in influencing actions through coordination sometimes it can be too effective and coordinate actions away from fundamentals copyright 2002 oxford university press

debt dependence and the demographic transition latin america in to the next century abstract in the decades ahead world demographic trends indicate that our planet s share of the population of working age will be gradually diminishing the regional incidence of the trends however shows a marked bias thus the general equilibrium of the world saving investment nexus may be fundamentally realigned in the years to come via dependency effects for example favorable demographic prospects in latin america and elsewhere in the developing world offer poorer countries the chance to use the potential of their own demographic transitions to propel financial transitions to domestically financed accumulation even capital export

labor force participation and monetary policy in the wake of the great recession in this paper we provide compelling evidence that cyclical factors account for the bulk of the post 2007 decline in the u s labor force participation rate we then proceed to formulate a stylized new keynesian model in which labor force participation is essentially acyclical during normal times that is in response to small or transitory shocks but drops markedly in the wake of a large and persistent aggregate demand shock finally we show that these considerations can have potentially crucial implications for the design of monetary policy especially under circumstances in which adjustments to the short term interest rate are constrained by the zero lower bound

a structural decomposition of the u s trade balance productivity demographics and fiscal policy abstract the us external deficits have been the most striking manifestation of global imbalances this paper investigates the contribution of productivity growth demographics and fiscal policy in accounting for the evolution of the us external imbalances against industrialized countries during the last three decades productivity growth plays a dominant role demographics explain a non negligible and nearly permanent component of the us trade deficit furthermore the international demographic transition is crucial for large us external imbalances to be consistent with the persistent decline of world real interest rates observed in the data fiscal policy is of minor importance

the impact of ecb monetary policy decisions and communication on the yield curve we use intraday changes in money market rates to construct indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from official communication of the european central bank and study their impact on the yield curve we show that communication may lead to substantial revisions in expectations of monetary policy and at the same time exert a significant impact on interest rates at longer maturities thereby the maturity response pattern to communication is hump shaped whereas that to policy decisions is downward sloping jel e43 e58

inflation targeting a new framework for monetary policy he world s central bankers and their staffs meet regularly in venues from basle to washington to share ideas and discuss common problems perhaps these frequent meetings help explain why changes in the tactics and strategy of monetary policymaking such as the adoption of money growth targets in the 1970s the intensification of efforts to reduce inflation in the 1980s and the recent push for increased institutional independence for central banks tend to occur in many countries more or less simultaneously whatever their source major changes in the theory and practice of central banking are of great importance for both individual countries and the international economy in this article we discuss a new strategy for monetary policy known as inflation targeting which has sparked much interest and debate among central bankers and monetary economists in recent years this approach is characterized as the name suggests by the announcement of official target ranges for the inflation rate at one or more horizons and by explicit acknowledgment that low and stable inflation is the overriding goal of monetary policy other important features of inflation targeting include increased communication with the public about the plans and objectives of the monetary policymakers and in many cases increased accountability of the central bank

imperfect credibility and inflation persistence in this paper we formulate a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered nominal contracts in which households and rms use optimal ltering to disentangle persistent and transitory shifts in the monetary policy rule the calibrated model accounts quite well for the dynamics of output and insation during the volcker disinsation and implies a sacri ce ratio very close to the estimated value our approach indicates that insation persistence and substantial costs of disinsation can be generated in an optimizing agent framework without relaxing the assumption of rational expectations or relying on arbitrary modi cations to the aggregate supply relation jel classi cation e31 e32 e52

the high frequency response of exchange rates to monetary policy actions and statements abstract this paper investigates the impact of us monetary policy on the level and volatility of exchange rates using an event study with intraday data for five currencies the us dollar exchange rate versus the euro the canadian dollar the british pound the swiss franc and the japanese yen i construct two indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from balance of risk statements estimation results show that both policy decisions and communication have economically large and highly significant effects on the exchange rates with the surprise component of statements accounting for most of the explainable variation in exchange rate returns in response to monetary policy this paper also shows that exchange rates tend to absorb fomc monetary surprises within 30 40 min from the announcement release

inflation announcements and social dynamics this paper investigates the eectiveness of central bank communication when rms have heterogeneous ination expectations that are updated through social dynamics the bank s credibility evolves with these dynamics and determines how well its announcements anchor expectations we show that trying to eliminate high ination by abruptly introducing a low ination target can lead to short term overshooting

capital flows to the new world as an intergenerational transfer the late nineteenth century saw international mass migrations of capital and labor from the old world to the new factors chased each other and the abundant resources at the frontier demographic structure also contributed to the massive capital flows from britain to the new world the dependency hypothesis is confirmed by estimation of savings functions in three new world economies argentina australia and canada in which high dependency rates may have significantly depressed domestic savings rates and pulled in foreign investment in effect an intergenerational transfer from old savers in the old world to young savers in the new

when and how much to talk credibility and flexibility in monetary policy with private information abstract this paper analyzes the role of noisy or imprecise announcements in mitigating the basic credibility problem in monetary policy based on a model where the monetary authority s private information gives rise to an unavoidable trade off between flexibility and credibility the analysis finds that noisy announcements can serve as a meaningful form of communication to make that trade off more favorable however such talk is not cheap the analysis predicts that those central banks who can speak more precisely are those who are less likely to speak at all

on the information content of asymmetric fomc policy statements evidence from a taylor rule perspective i introduction since 1983 the federal open market committee fomc has included in its policy directives a statement indicating conditional expectations about the future although the specific language used to communicate expectations has evolved over the years the bias statement has persistently been interpreted as an indicator of the likely direction of future changes in the committee s federal funds rate target and has therefore been carefully monitored by fed watchers and other financial market participants as the fomc has enhanced its efforts to communicate its policy intentions to the public in recent years the contemporary version of the bias statement has been subject to considerable discussion and scrutiny from 2000 through 2002 the fomc s postmeeting press releases included a statement referring to the balance of risks in the foreseeable future paralleling the federal reserve s dual objectives of price stability and maximum sustainable economic growth the statements took the form of stating that the concerns of fomc members about prospective economic developments are tilted toward either inflation pressures or economic weakness in 2003 the committee expanded this balance of risks language further to identify separate risk assessments for both inflation and real economic activity when it was adopted the language of the balance of risks statement was intended to be more general than the previous statements of policy bias to avoid giving the impression that the statements directly signaled impending changes in the funds rate target nevertheless as was the case with the earlier language the balance of risks statement has tended to be interpreted as indicating likely future policy moves in this article i examine the question of whether such an interpretation might be warranted as an empirical matter in particular i examine the information content of asymmetric policy statements for predicting future fomc policy actions using monthly dummy variables to indicate the prevailing direction of policy asymmetry over a sample period of 1984 2002 the time series approach facilitates the use of a monthly data set for conditioning the information content of the bias statement on macroeconomic variables thought to be of importance to policy makers in particular i use inflation and output data to estimate a baseline taylor rule specification for policy and test whether the bias statement provides any additional information for forecasting changes in the fomc s federal funds rate target the evidence presented here shows that the statements of policy asymmetry do indeed convey information that is useful for forecasting changes in the funds rate target the information content in the bias statement has been a statistically significant factor for predicting changes in the funds rate target over the sample period even after controlling for responses to policy variables in the taylor rule equation in light of this finding i estimate an alternative specification in which the variables representing asymmetry are interacted with the parameters of the estimated taylor rule equation from this perspective statements of policy bias are associated with a greater or lesser degree of responsiveness to inflation and output data during the sample period considered here variation in the committee s responses to inflation data has evidently been the predominant factor for explaining the predictive power of asymmetric policy statements this is particularly true for the first half of the sample period in which the fomc was actively pursuing a policy of disinflation ii the asymmetric policy statement and its interpretation a brief history from 1983 until 1997 statements of an asymmetric bias were included in the fomc policy directive as a note that greater reserve restraint or lesser reserve restraint either would or might be acceptable during the intermeeting period depending on emerging economic circumstances

investigating inflation persistence across monetary regimes under inflation targeting estimates of the indexation parameter in hybrid new keynesian phillips curves are either equal to zero or very low in the united kingdom canada sweden and new zealand analogous results hold for the euro area under the european monetary union and for switzerland under the new monetary regime under stable regimes with clearly defined nominal anchors inflation appears to be purely forward looking these results question the notion that the intrinsic inflation persistence found in post wwii u s data is structural in the sense of lucas carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 1 1976 19 46 and suggest that hardwiring inflation persistence in macroeconomic models is potentially misleading

have increases in federal reserve transparency improved private sector interest rate forecasts yes this paper shows that since the late 1980s u s financial markets and private sector forecasters have become 1 better able to forecast the federal funds rate at horizons out to several months 2 less surprised by federal reserve announcements 3 more certain of their interest rate forecasts ex ante as measured by interest rate options and 4 less diverse in the cross sectional variety of their interest rate forecasts we also present evidence that strongly suggests increases in federal reserve transparency played a role for example private sector forecasts of gdp and inflation have not experienced similar improvements over the same period indicating that the improvement in interest rate forecasts has been special

market distortions and government transparency in this paper we investigate how government transparency depends on economic distortions we first consider an abstract class of economies in which a benevolent policy maker is privately informed about the exogenous state of the economy and contemplates whether to release this information our key result is that distortions limit communication even if transparency is ex ante pareto superior to opaqueness it cannot constitute an equilibrium when distortions are sufficiently high we next confirm this broad insight in two applied contexts in which monopoly power and income taxes are the specific sources of distortions jel d82 e61

sensitivity to exogeneity assumptions in program evaluation in many empirical studies of the effect of social programs researchers assume that conditional on a set of observed covariates assignment to the treatment is exogenous or unconfounded aka selection on observables often this assumption is not realistic and researchers are concerned about the robustness of their results to departures from it one approach e g charles manski 1990 is to entirely drop the exogeneity assumption and investigate what can be learned about treatment effects without it with unbounded outcomes and in the absence of alternative identifying assumptions there are no restrictions on the set of possible values for average treatment effects this does not mean however that all evaluations are equally sensitive to departures from the exogeneity assumption in this paper i explore an alternative approach developed by paul rosenbaum and donald rubin 1983 where the assumption of exogeneity is explicitly relaxed by allowing for a limited amount of correlation between treatment and unobserved components of the outcomes the starting point of the sensitivity analysis is the assumption that the exogeneity assumption is satisfied only conditional on an additional unobserved covariate making assumptions about the effect of the unobserved covariate on the outcome and its correlation with the treatment i trace out the set of possible values for the treatment effect of interest by considering a sufficiently large set of possible correlations with outcomes and treatment one can recover the bounds on the treatment effect derived by manski 1990 the approach here in the spirit of rosenbaum and rubin 1983 and rosenbaum 1995 is to allow only a limited amount of correlation and to judge the sensitivity of average treatment effect estimates to such correlations there are two novel features of the proposed analysis first rather than formulate the sensitivity in terms of coefficients on the unobserved covariate the sensitivity results are presented in terms of partial r values which may be easier to interpret second the partial r values of the unobserved covariates are compared to those for the observed covariates in order to facilitate judgments regarding the plausibility of values necessary to substantially change results obtained under exogeneity the proposed sensitivity analysis is conceptually related to the practice of assessing sensitivity of estimates by comparisons with results obtained by discarding one or more observed covariates james heckman and v joseph hotz 1989 rajeev dehejia and sadek wahba 1999 jeffrey smith and petra todd 2001 the attraction of the sensitivity analysis is that it is more directly relevant one is not interested in what would have happened in the absence of covariates actually observed but in biases that are the result from not observing all relevant covariates

oral interventions versus actual interventions in fx markets an event study approach the article assesses whether exchange rate communication or oral intervention has been an effective policy tool for monetary authorities to influence exchange rates it employs an event study methodology that identifies intervention clusters or events for the euro dollar and the dollar yen exchange rates the article finds that both oral intervention events and actual intervention events have been highly successful over the short to medium run the article shows that the success of intervention events is related to market conditions and to the coordination among policy makers it also finds that the success of communication and actual interventions is largely unrelated to monetary policy thus suggesting that interventions primarily function through a coordination channel

does money matter abstract the desire to attain personal wealth has long been regarded as the foremost motive for entrepreneurship other goals and values however may also contribute to entrepreneurial motivation thus the extent to which money matters relative to other motives is an empirical question in this study we examine the role of wealth as the motive for the decision to found new ventures three focal questions guide our research 1 does money matter more relative to other decision dimensions in deciding to start a new high technology venture 2 does money matter more to entrepreneurs compared to non entrepreneurs and 3 does money matter in absolute terms that is does a decision model that focuses solely on the motive of wealth attainment parsimoniously predict entrepreneurs start up decisions we conducted in depth interviews with 51 entrepreneurs and a control group of 28 senior managers who decided not to start ventures non entrepreneurs in the high technology industry in british columbia to address our research questions the motives we examined are wealth attainment and an aggregate of other dimensions identified by entrepreneurs and managers we considered three components of values participants ratings of the importance of various decision dimensions their rating of the salience of these dimensions and their satisfaction with prior levels of attainment on those decision dimensions we assessed beliefs as participants perceived probability of attaining their desired level of a particular decision dimension in each of three alternatives the position held at the time the venture decision was made the venture itself and the next best career alternative at that time the data were analyzed to compare entrepreneurs values and beliefs regarding wealth with an aggregate of other decision dimensions our relative hypotheses and with those of non entrepreneurs our comparative hypotheses our findings do not support the common perception that money is the only or even the most important motive for entrepreneurs decisions to start new ventures wealth attainment was significantly less important to entrepreneurs relative to an aggregate of 10 other decision dimensions and entrepreneurs did not rate wealth as any more important than did non entrepreneurs non entrepreneurs rated wealth as no more important than other motives wealth attainment was also significantly less salient to entrepreneurs decisions to venture than were other motives non entrepreneurs reported that wealth was significantly more salient to their decision against founding a venture than other dimensions in fact non entrepreneurs rated wealth attainment as significantly more salient to their decision against founding than entrepreneurs rated it for their decision to proceed with starting a high technology business a significant number of entrepreneurs started businesses even when they believed that doing so offered them a lower probability of obtaining their most desired level of wealth than did one of their other alternatives satisfaction ratings and stated beliefs also dispute classical predictions just prior to making the decision to venture the entrepreneurs in our study were as satisfied with wealth as they were with other decision dimensions the non entrepreneurs were actually more satisfied with wealth attainment than with other dimensions a comparison of the groups revealed no difference in satisfaction with wealth attainment levels entrepreneurs did believe that their chances of attaining their desired level of wealth were much greater through founding a new high technology venture than through their other alternatives this difference in beliefs however was not significantly greater than their optimistic beliefs about chances of attaining desired levels of other dimensions it was significantly higher compared to the non entrepreneurs belief difference measures for wealth in fact the entrepreneurs stated beliefs regarding the chances of attaining their desired levels of all dimensions were higher than those of the non entrepreneurs suggesting that entrepreneurs were simply more optimistic at the time of their decision than non entrepreneurs salience findings suggest that these optimistic beliefs about wealth did not motivate the founding decision alone we can distinguish those people who successfully started ventures by their regard for wealth as a less salient factor and their beliefs in higher chances of a venture producing monetary and other returns other motives such as innovation vision independence and challenge were more important and much more salient to this sample of entrepreneurs our findings have implications for practice teaching and research venture capitalists who partially base their assessment of entrepreneurs on the extent to which they are motivated to make a great deal of money may benefit from reconsideration of this criterion we have evidence of one group of high technology entrepreneurs who achieved success without placing much decision weight on attainment of personal wealth nascent entrepreneurs and those who teach entrepreneurship can use this empirical finding to argue two main points 1 not all entrepreneurs found a business for personal wealth reasons and 2 one need not be motivated by personal wealth attainment to be a successful entrepreneur similarly theoretical models that assume money is the primary motive for entrepreneurial activity require re examination future research in entrepreneurship should focus less on wealth attainment and more on other motives for the venturing decision a multiple attribute decision model may be able to more fully explain venturing decisions

policy announcements and welfare in the presence of idiosyncratic risk the public revelation of information about uncertain aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can be detrimental to social welfare by announcing informative signals on non insurable aggregate risk the policy maker distorts agents insurance incentives and increases the riskiness of the optimal allocation that is feasible in self enforceable arrangements as an application we consider a monetary authority that may reveal changes in the inflation target and document that the negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can very well dominate conventional effects in favor for the release of better information

does inflation targeting really make a difference evaluating the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries abstract we evaluate the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries that adopted this policy in the 1990s to address the self selection problem of policy adoption we make use of a variety of propensity score matching methods recently developed in the treatment effect literature our results show that inflation targeting has no significant effects on either inflation or inflation variability in these seven countries further evidence from long term nominal interest rates and income velocity of money also supports the window dressing view of inflation targeting

monetary policy implementation and the federal funds rate this paper investigates how the implementation of monetary policy affects the dynamics and the volatility of the federal funds rate since the early 1980s the most important changes in the fed s conduct of monetary policy refer to the role of the federal funds rate target and the reserve requirement system we show that the improved communication and transparency regarding the federal funds rate target has significantly increased the fed s influence on the federal funds rate since 1994 by contrast the declining role of required reserves in the u s has contributed to higher federal funds rate volatility our results suggest that the planned introduction of remunerated reserves will further enhance the controllability of the federal funds rate

heterogeneous information quality strategic complementarities and optimal policy design abstract the beauty contest framework of morris and shin 2002 is extended to allow sub groups within the population of agents to differ in the quality i e precision of their private information we discuss the inefficiency of the resulting model s equilibrium and assess the relative effectiveness in remedying this inefficiency of i a pigouvian tax scheme ii direct policy intervention by means of an instrument which can modify the state of the world the disclosure policy implications of each of these two policy approaches are also analyzed

contagion during the greek sovereign debt crisis abstract we examine the impact of news about greece and news about a greek bailout on bank stock prices in 2010 using data for 48 european banks we identify the twenty days with extreme returns on greek sovereign bonds and categorise the news events during those days into news about greece and news about the prospects of a greek bailout we find that except for greek banks news about greece does not lead to abnormal returns while news about a bailout does even for banks without any exposure to greece or other highly indebted euro countries this finding suggests that markets consider news about the bailout to be a signal of european governments willingness in general to use public funds to combat the financial crisis sovereign bond prices of portugal ireland and spain respond to both news about greece and news about a greek bailout

the effect of inflation targets on the level of expected inflation in five countries did inflation targets reduce the level of expected inflation in australia canada new zealand sweden and the united kingdom in this note predictions of forecasts by professional forecasters are constructed for five consecutive 12 month periods after the announcement of targets these predictions use a variety of information variables known to forecasters at the time they make their forecasts the results show that after the announcement of targets predicted forecasts are less than actual forecasts in australia canada new zealand and sweden this is evidence that targets reduced the level of expected inflation no evidence of such effects is found in the united kingdom

monetary mystique secrecy and central banking abstract the paper contains a discussion of the role of secrecy in the implementation of monetary policy it documents the federal reserve s defense of secrecy as argued in a recent freedom of information act suit the federal reserve s arguments are evaluated on the basis of economic theory theoretical papers related to the secrecy issue are reviewed the discussion highlights a number of potential benefits and costs of central bank secrecy and identifies some conditions under which secrecy could be socially beneficial

quantitative goals for monetary policy we study empirically the macroeconomic effects of an explicit de jure quantitative goal for monetary policy quantitative goals take three forms exchange rates money growth rates and inflation targets we analyze the effects on inflation of both having a quantitative target and of hitting a declared target our empirical work uses an annual data set covering 42 countries between 1960 and 2000 and takes account of other determinants of inflation such as fiscal policy the business cycle and openness to international trade and the endogeneity of the monetary policy regime we find that both having and hitting quantitative targets for monetary policy is systematically and robustly associated with lower inflation the exact form of the monetary target matters somewhat especially for the sustainability of the monetary regime but is less important than having some quantitative target successfully achieving a quantitative monetary goal is also associated with less volatile output

the role of central bank transparency for guiding private sector forecasts central banks have become remarkably more transparent over the last few decades in this paper we study the effects of this evolution focusing on whether enhanced central bank transparency lowers dispersion among professional forecasters of key economic variables we use a large set of proxies for central bank transparency in 12 advanced economies we find evidence for a sizeable effect e g by announcing a quantified inflation objective or by publishing inflation and output forecasts however there are decreasing marginal effects to increases in transparency and the disagreement among the expectations of the general public is not affected this suggests that there are possible limits to transparency

on the long term effectiveness of exchange rate communication and interventions abstract exchange rate communication has come to play an increasingly important role as a policy tool for monetary authorities over the past decade the paper assesses the strategies and the long term effectiveness of communication as well as actual interventions the empirical results for the g3 economies indicate that communication has not only exhibited a significant contemporaneous effect on exchange rates but also has moved forward exchange rates up to a horizon of 6 months in the desired direction moreover communication is found to reduce exchange rate volatility and uncertainty whereas actual interventions tend to raise it overall this underlines a key difference between these two policy tools and suggests that communication tends to be a fairly effective policy tool over the medium term

why nations become wealthy the effects of adult longevity on saving we analyze steady state and out of steady state effects of the transition in adult longevity on the national saving rate using historical data and international panel data the rise in adult life expectancy has a large and statistically significant effect on aggregate saving the effects have been especially pronounced in east asia because its mortality transition was very rapid gains in life expectancy are much more important than declines in child dependency population aging may not lead to lower saving rates in the future if life expectancy and the duration of retirement continue to increase

central bank communication and monetary policy a survey of theory and evidence over the last two decades communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy these real world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication mostly empirical and almost all of it written in this decade we survey this ever growing literature the evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank s toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions and potentially to help achieve central banks macroeconomic objectives however the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy

the long run information effect of central bank communication abstract why do long run interest rates respond to central bank communication whereas existing explanations imply a common set of signals drives short and long run yields we show that news on economic uncertainty can have increasingly large effects along the yield curve to evaluate this channel we use the publication of the bank of england s inflation report from which we measure a set of high dimensional signals the signals that drive long run interest rates do not affect short run rates and operate primarily through the term premium this suggests communication plays an important role in shaping perceptions of long run uncertainty

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

regional influences on fomc voting patterns this paper looks at the monetary policy decisions of the u s federal reserve and asks whether observed voting patterns have been driven entirely by national concerns or whether regional factors have also played a role we find that fed policymakers take into account developments in regional unemployment when casting votes on monetary policy these results are robust to different specifications of the voting equation this research is relevant for the fed and it may also be relevant for europe s fledgling central bank in frankfurt in light of regional differences within the euro area

the design and communication of systematic monetary policy strategies the ecacy of central bank communications is inextricably linked to the characteristics of the monetary policy framework therefore this paper presents a set of fundamental principles regarding the joint design of monetary policy strategy and communications the practical implications of these principles are illustrated by considering a number of signicant policy challenges faced by central banks in the advanced economies

does government ideology matter in monetary policy a panel data analysis for oecd countries this paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in oecd countries we use quarterly data in the 1980 1 2005 4 period and exclude emu countries our taylor rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time variant index of central bank independence with government ideology the results show that leftist governments have somewhat lower short term nominal interest rates than rightwing governments when central bank independence is low in contrast short term nominal interest rates are higher under leftist governments when central bank independence is high the effect is more pronounced when exchange rates are flexible our findings are compatible with the view that leftist governments in an attempt to deflect blame of their traditional constituencies have pushed market oriented policies by delegating monetary policy to conservative central bankers

measuring the natural yield curve we generalize the concept of the natural rate of interest laubach and williams 2003 woodford 2003 by defining and estimating the natural yield curve nyc the term structure of natural interest rates our motivation stems i a from the observation that at times when central banks attempt to directly affect long term interest rates e g via quantitative easing the gap between the short term real and natural rate is no more a good indicator of the monetary policy stance we estimate the nyc on us data document its main properties and show i a that in the period 2008 to 2011 the nyc allows to better capture the us monetary policy stance than the short term natural rate

generalizations about using value added measures of teacher quality the extensive investigation of the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results first there is sub stantial variation in teacher quality as measured by the value added to achievement or future aca demic attainment or earnings second variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries including post graduate schooling experience and licensing examination scores appear to explain little of the variation in teacher quality so measured with the exception of early experience together these findings underscore explicitly that observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality

does a bias in fomc policy directives help predict intermeeting policy changes since 1984 the fomc has issued directives indicating a bias toward easing or tightening this paper investigates the information content of these asymmetric directives for the likelihood of inter meeting changes in policy during the greenspan chairmanship if policy is measured by the change in the average daily federal funds rate after a directive is issued the results indicate that a bias predicts a significant change in the average funds rate if policy is measured qualitatively by whether the target for the federal funds rate changed a bias significantly affects the probability that the target will be changed

what is wrong with taylor rules using judgment in monetary policy through targeting rules it is argued that inflation targeting is best understood as a commitment to a targeting rule rather than an instrument rule e ither ageneral targeting rule explicit objectives for monetary policy or a specific targeting rule a criterion for the forecasts of the target variables to be fulfilled essentially the equality of the marginal rates of transformation and substitution between the target variables targeting rules allow the use of judgment and extramodel information are more robust and easier to verify than optimal instrument rules and they can nevertheless bring the economy close to the socially optimal equilibrium

open mouth operations abstract this paper explains how central bank statements rather than open market operations can be used to implement monetary policy in the extreme policy instruments can be held constant and yet interest rates will evolve along the path desired by the central bank we show how the recent implementation of monetary policy in new zealand works in this way using announcement data from new zealand we find that open mouth operations lead to large changes in interest rates across all maturities and these changes cannot be explained by open market operations implications are drawn for monetary policy in other jurisdictions

social value of public information comment morris and shin 2002 is actually pro transparency not con the main result of morris and shin 2002 restated in papers by amato morris and shin 2002 and amato and shin 2003 and commented upon by the economist 2004 has been presented and interpreted as an anti transparency result more public information can be bad however some scrutiny of the result shows that it is actually pro transparency except in very special circumstances more public information is good furthermore for a conservative benchmark of equal precision in public and privateinformation social welfare is higher than in as ituation without public information

fertility and the real exchange rate we use a quinquennial data set covering 87 countries between 1975 and 2005 to investigate empirically the relationship between fertility and the real effective exchange rate theoretically a country experiencing a decline in its fertility rate can be expected to experience a real depreciation we test and confirm this hypothesis controlling for a number of other potential determinants we find a statistically significant and robust link between fertility and the exchange rate our point estimate is that a decline in the fertility rate of one child per woman is associated with a depreciation of approximately 15 in the real effective exchange rate on utilise une base de donnees quinquennales pour 87 pays entre 1975 et 2005 afin d etudier empiriquement la relation entre fecondite et taux de change reel effectif theoriquement un pays qui fait l experience d un declin dans le taux de fecondite peut s attendre a une depreciation reelle on teste et on confirme que c est le cas en controlant un certain nombre d autres determinants potentiels il existe une relation significative et robuste entre fecondite et taux de change un declin du taux de fecondite d un enfant par femme est associea une depreciation d a peu pres 15 dans le taux de change reel effectif