This thesis examines two closely related issues: (1) the ability of imperfect information models to explain some aspects of business cycle dynamics, and (2) the interaction between central bank communications and monetary policy. These issues are related because central bank communications can only be studied in models with imperfect information. In chapter 1, I investigate the ability of a noisy rational expectations model to generate plausible macroeconomic dynamics. The model allows for imperfect, heterogeneous information, and signal extraction from endogenous variables. I find that imperfect information significantly improves the model's ability to generate persistent, hump-shaped responses to a transitory monetary policy shock. This is achieved without the need for mechanical frictions. In addition, the model generates realistic inflation forecast errors. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between central bank statements about future policy and the degree of commitment. I allow the central bank to make (possibly vague) statements about its expected future policy. I begin by assuming that the central bank adopts a loss function which internalizes the bygone costs of deviating from such a pre-announced policy action. The resulting policy is a convex combination of pure discretion and full commitment. As the precision of central bank statements increases, this policy converges to the full commitment policy. I then show that this type of commitment to internalize bygone costs is sustainable only for moderate degrees of precision. Chapter 3 studies the impact of central bank communications about the state of the economy. In particular, I examine the extent to which increased central bank transparency creates a meaningful trade-off between beneficially conveying fundamental information and adversely contaminating observed data with the central bank's opinion. This question is addressed in a variant of the model from chapter 1. In this environment, both the central bank and private agents learn about the state of the economy from observations of endogenous variables. By making the central bank learn from endogenous variables, I am able to study the impact of communications precision on the bank's signal extraction problem.

This thesis examines two closely related issues: (1) the ability of imperfect information models to explain some aspects of business cycle dynamics, and (2) the interaction between central bank communications and monetary policy. These issues are related because central bank communications can only be studied in models with imperfect information. In chapter 1, I investigate the ability of a noisy rational expectations model to generate plausible macroeconomic dynamics. The model allows for imperfect, heterogeneous information, and signal extraction from endogenous variables. I find that imperfect information significantly improves the model's ability to generate persistent, hump-shaped responses to a transitory monetary policy shock. This is achieved without the need for mechanical frictions. In addition, the model generates realistic inflation forecast errors. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between central bank statements about future policy and the degree of commitment. I allow the central bank to make (possibly vague) statements about its expected future policy. I begin by assuming that the central bank adopts a loss function which internalizes the bygone costs of deviating from such a pre-announced policy action. The resulting policy is a convex combination of pure discretion and full commitment. As the precision of central bank statements increases, this policy converges to the full commitment policy. I then show that this type of commitment to internalize bygone costs is sustainable only for moderate degrees of precision. Chapter 3 studies the impact of central bank communications about the state of the economy. In particular, I examine the extent to which increased central bank transparency creates a meaningful trade-off between beneficially conveying fundamental information and adversely contaminating observed data with the central bank's opinion. This question is addressed in a variant of the model from chapter 1. In this environment, both the central bank and private agents learn about the state of the economy from observations of endogenous variables. By making the central bank learn from endogenous variables, I am able to study the impact of communications precision on the bank's signal extraction problem.

This article will verify whether the central banks create political business cycles or not. To refer to the Opportunistic Model operated by Leetouwer and Maier (2002), this research will expand the acquisition time of data till the fourth season of 2008, and added Korea¡BMalaysia and Taiwan into the model. In this article, the independent variables will be the rates announced by central banks of these ten countries. The dependent variables will be the date of president/parliamentary elections and the independence of central bank to verify before the elections whether will the central banks create political business cycles through setting lower rate in monetary policy are pressured by rules or not. The empirical results show that: 1.The assumption of Central banks will use interest rates to create a political business cycle does not hold. This complements with Leetouwer and Maier¡¦s results studied in 2002, the interest rate cannot be used as a tool to create political business cycle. 2. The higher independence of central bank, the interest rate introduced by central bank will be lower, and as well as the inflation rate.

This paper deploy the logit approach model and collect annual data from 1974 to 2004 in 22 OECD countries. It can examine that the option of exchange rate regime may cause the replacements of the governor of central banks during his tenure of office. According to prior empirical studies shows that the rightist parties favor low inflation, they may choose fixed exchange rate regime for holding monetary stability; otherwise, the leftist parties prefer low unemployment and high production, they may adopt the flexible exchange rate regime to maintain independent monetary policy and to achieve their macroeconomic objectives. Due to diverse political preferences, Does the choice of exchange rate regime disobeyed the political ideology of ruling party will cause that the central bank governors lose their job? Our results manifest that these chairmen of central banks can independently insist and defend their exchange rate regimes in OECD countries.

This paper examines how various monetary policy signals such as official discount rate changes¡Bspeeches and monetary aggregate M2 annual growth rate affect the structure of interest rates in Taiwan. The model of the thesis is based on the Svensson model (1994) which is the extension of the parsimonious model defined by Nelson and Siegel (1987). It is being shown, that the term of interest rates, estimated based on Svensson model result in a fault value for Taiwan, due to a unsound bond market especially in the short term and one-year interest rates. There is no proof that unexpected movements in the short end of the yield curve are mainly driven by unexpected changes in the official discount rate. Speeches are found to be a more important determinant for the longer end of the term structure. The conclusion is that central bank communication is an essential part of the conduct of monetary policy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 92 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-92).

This dissertation presents three chapters addressing issues pertaining to monetary policy, information, and central bank communication. The first chapter studies optimal monetary policy in an environment where policy actions provide a signal of economic fundamentals to imperfectly informed agents. I derive the optimal discretionary policy in closed form and show that, in contrast to the perfect information case, the signaling channel leads the policymaker to be tougher on inflation. The strength of the signaling effect of policy depends on relative uncertainty levels. As the signaling effect strengthens, the optimal policy under discretion approaches that under commitment to a forward-looking linear rule, thereby decreasing the stabilization bias. This contributes to the central bank finding it optimal to withhold its additional information from private agents. Under a general linear policy rule, inflation and output forecasts can respond positively to a positive interest rate surprise when the signaling channel is strong. This positive response is the opposite of what standard perfect information New Keynesian models predict and it matches empirical patterns found by previous studies. Chapter 2 provides new empirical evidence supporting the predictions of the model presented in Chapter 1. More specifically, I find that the responses of inflation forecasts to interest rate surprises is especially positive when there is greater uncertainty regarding the previous forecast. Finally, Chapter 3 examines whether communications by the Federal Open Market Committee might have the ability to influence financial market responses to macroeconomic news. In particular, I am able to relate labor-related word use in FOMC statements and meeting minutes to the amount by which interest rates' response to labor-related news exceeds their response to other news. / Economics

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of CBI-reforms on inflation in different parts of the world from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Compared to previous studies, this study focuses on whether CBI-reforms have different effects on reducing inflation in different parts of the world. The study is based on a 132 country data-set from 1980 to 2005 compiled by Daunfeldt et al. (2008). The result indicates that the reduction in inflation due to the CBI-reforms varies between 2.2 and 12.32 percentage points in Asia, Europe, South America and Oceania, supporting the claim that implementing CBI-reforms can be successful in reducing inflation in most of the parts of the world.

L’objectif principal de la présente thèse est d’analyser les conceptions de la politique monétaire et les cadres monétaires dans les pays en développement. Nous analysons trois aspects du cadre de la politique monétaire : le degré d'indépendance de la banque centrale, la gestion de la politique monétaire et le régime de taux de change. Ce travail comporte des analyses quantitatives et empiriques ainsi que des études de cas détaillées de trois pays du Moyen-Orient. Les analyses empiriques renvoient à trois domaines majeurs que sont : l'existence du phénomène de la peur du flottement et la relation entre la volatilité des taux de change et la volatilité macroéconomique ; le degré d'indépendance de la politique monétaire dans les pays en développement dans le contexte de leur intégration accrue au système économique mondial ; enfin, le degré d'indépendance de la banque centrale et la façon dont il influence la peur du flottement et l'indépendance de la politique monétaire. Les résultats démontrent que l'indépendance de la banque centrale est responsable de l'augmentation de l'indépendance de la politique monétaire nationale vis-à-vis des taux d'intérêt mondiaux et que celle-ci contribue à réduire la peur du flottement dans les pays en développement. Les conclusions des études de cas suggèrent que l'indépendance de la banque centrale est cruciale pour assurer la stabilité des changes et des prix. Toutefois, les pays en développement ne devraient pas se focaliser uniquement et pendant de longues périodes sur la stabilité des changes au détriment d'autres facteurs. On a constaté en effet les avantages découlant d'une gestion efficace et prudente du régime de taux de change. / The main objective of this thesis is to analyse monetary policy designs and monetary frameworks in developing countries. The thesis studies three features of the monetary policy framework: the level of central bank independence, the conduct of monetary policy and exchange rate regime. This study conducts quantitative empirical analyses as well as detailed case studies of three Middle East countries.The above mentioned quantitative analyses cover the following three domains: firstly the existence of the phenomenon of fear of floating and the relationship between exchange rate volatility and macroeconomic volatility, secondly the level of monetary policy independence in developing countries in the context of increasing integration of these countries into the global economic system and lastly the level of central bank independence as well as the way in which it influences both the phenomenon of fear of floating and monetary independence. The findings show that the central bank independence contributes to the increase of national monetary policy independence from the world interest rates and reduces the fear of floating in developing countries, at least to a certain extent. The main conclusions drawn from the case studies put forward that central bank independence is vital in the process of attaining both price stability and exchange rate stability. Nevertheless, developing countries should not aim only at exchange rate stability and they should avoid neglecting other factors for long periods. As a matter of fact, the findings emphasize the advantages of an effective and prudent exchange rate regime management.

Diploma thesis is entitled Monetary policy of NBS and convergence to EMU. Introductory theoretical section describes the development of monetary unions in the past and the causes of their extinction. Subsequently, it is devoted to the foundation of the European Monetary Union in various stages, of its crisis and transition to the ERM II exchange rate system. It characterizes the nominal Maastricht criteria in theory. Following chapters constitute the practical part of the thesis. Chapters 2-4 discuss the monetary policy of the NBS and its roles and objectives. They outline monetary policy of NBS in the individual periods followed by an evaluation of measures and compliance with the main objectives, such as exchange rate stability, inflation targeting and inflation targeting in ERM II. The last chapter discusses the costs and benefits of euro, their comparison and evaluation of the appropriateness of the timing of entry into EMU. Real convergence is emphasised and represented by GDP per capita, the adjustment of price levels, employment and foreign trade. Nominal convergence is represented by Maastricht convergence criteria and their implementation. The development of various criteria is compared with the countries of V4 -- Czech republic, Poland and Hungary. Finally it summarises the overall functioning of the National Bank in the field of monetary policy, the appreciation of the euro advantages and appropriateness of the timing.