Both policymakers and economists increasingly accept that the main medium- to long-run goal of monetary policy is the pursuit of price stability, defined as maintaining a low and stable rate of inflation. A high and variable inflation rate is socially and economically costly.

Inflation targeting in an open economy insolves a number of complexities that do not arise with inflation targeting in a clises economy. One of these is that central banks in open economies have to decide how to repond to changes in the exchange rate.

Do better functioning financial intermediaries -financial intermediaries that are better at ameliorating information asymmetrics and facilitating transactions- exert a causal influence on economic growth? Providing evidence on causality has implications for policymakers and economists. For instance, ...

Several Asian economies have accumulated large stocks of international reserves over the last few years. This motivates the question we address in this paper from an empirical point of view. Are these large increases in reserves an efficient crisis-prevention strategy? Or are they second-best to other ...

This paper explores the implications of the vast body of studies of cross-country growth determinants for the evaluation of alternative policies. Empirical growth studies have experienced a remarkable flowering in the last fifteen years, and innumerable insights have unquestionably been uncovered ...

As noted by Leeper (1995) “the business pages of leading newspapers give the impression that the effects of alternative monetary policies on the macroeconomy are well understood and predictable.” They tend “to write with great certainty that when the monetary authority raises interest rates it slows ...

Over the last twenty years, many central banks have adopted increasing standards of transparency in communicating their monetary policy objectives, in particular regarding the explicit definition and quantification of their price stability objective or inflation target. One important benefit of increased ...

Este ensayo recorre los primeros cincuenta años de la Caja de Crédito Hipotecario de Chile desde su creación en 1855. Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, las operaciones crediticias de la Caja activaron la rápida expansión del regadío del Valle Central y posibilitaron el concomitante aumento de ...

Entre los años 2007 y 2008, la economía Chilena experimentó severos shocks de costos (aumentos de los precios internacionales de los productos básicos, incrementos del costo de la energía, sequías), los que fueron más persistentes de lo que se pensaba cuando se iniciaron y llevaron la tasa de inflación ...

Globalization has been under attack over the last few years. Activists, famous academics, and commentators of various stripes have mounted a systematic campaign against free trade in goods and, especially, in financial claims. One of the latest manifestations of this antiliberalization mood was the ...