In the 1990s several emerging market economies such as Chile Mexico and a number of southeast Asian countries displayed episodes of peaking growth rates combined with increasing current account deficits and appreciating currencies which ended with abrupt reversions in capital flows and recessions. In ...

The financial crisis that unraveled after the Lehman Brothers collapse affected in different degrees almost all countries around the world independently of the direct exposure of their financial institutions to toxic assets. Most countries saw a sharp drop in demand together with sudden increases in ...

Policymarkers and the academic community have reached an increasing consensus during the last two decades: the primary objective of monetary policy should be to control inflation (see, for example, King, 1999). A less settled issue is the appropriate role of the central bank regarding other, secondary ...

Central banks resort to a variety of alternative arrangements in formulating, conducting, and communicating monetary policy. One increasingly popular type of arrangement is based on a target range for inflation. In this setup the conduct of monetary policy is oriented to keeping inflation withing ...