Emerging economies with inflation targets (IT) face a dilemma between fulfilling the theoretical conditions of "strict IT", which imply a fully flexible exchange rate, or applying a "flexible IT", which entails a de facto managed floating exchange rate with FX interventions to moderate exchange...

This paper presents a model featuring variable utilization rates across firms due to production inflexibilities and idiosyncratic demand uncertainty. Within a New Keynesian framework, we show how the corresponding bottlenecks and stock-outs generate asymmetries in the transmission mechanism of...

This paper shows that there exist fiscal strategies that deliver equilibrium uniqueness in a monetary economy in which the central bank follows an interest rate peg. In contrast to the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), such strategies always satisfy a government intertemporal budget...

In this paper I analyze the classes of price-paths arising from a non-Ricardian fiscal monetary plan along the lines of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL), under a price invariant nominal money supply rule in a standard Sidrauski-Brock model. I first show that fiscalist speculative...

I examine the postulates of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) under a nominal interest rate peg. First, I show that the usual definition of a non-Ricardian plan involves a number of government's non-credible policy commitments, thus confuting the interpretation of the FTPL as a...

Empirical evidence shows that fixed exchange rates do not provide more fiscal discipline than flexible regimes, despite the fact that, in priciple, fixing the exchange rate imposes important restrictions on seignoriage revenues. A more detailed analysis of seignoriage allows to explain the...

This paper looks at the long term output effect of those monetary policies aimed at reducing inflation from its peak by late seventies, in nine major OECD countries. The estimated effect depends on the way nominal shocks are identified. Alternatively to the cross-country regression analysis we...

This paper develops and estimates a game-theoretical model of inflation targeting where the central banker's preferences are asymmetric around the targeted rate. In particular, positive deviations from the target can be weighted more, or less, severely than negative ones in the central banker's...

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Spain suffered high rates of inflation but inflation declined and by 1997 inflation had fallen to approximately 2 percent. To fight inflation, Spain implemented austere monetary programs, joined the EMS in 1989, enacted central bank autonomy in 1994, and...

We test the Barro-Gordon model extended to allow for persistence in unemployment. First, we build an index of central bank independence and measures of persistence, and then we compare them with inflation performance in OECD countries. Our results show, as theory predicts, a robust negative...