Comparative Economic Studies最新文献

This special issue of Comparative Economic Studies, commemorating fifty years since the end of the Bretton Woods system, examines the adjustment of small open economies to floating exchange rates and new monetary policy frameworks. Based on a workshop held at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute in June 2023, six papers analyse dimensions such as the evolution of monetary policy regimes, the impact of economic crises and the use of unconventional monetary policies in Canada, Israel, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. The findings highlight the benefits and limitations of inflation targeting, the challenges of global financial integration and the strategic responses of central banks to maintain stability and independence, providing policymakers with valuable insights into the complex dynamics of monetary policy in the post-Bretton Woods era.

The paper investigates the monetary policy of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in the post-Bretton Woods era, shedding light on the dynamics between the SNB and the Bundesbank and its successor, the European Central Bank, respectively. Our econometric analysis shows a high degree of synchronisation between the SNB’s interest rate changes and the decisions made in Frankfurt. The results also suggest a strong tendency toward direct exchange rate targeting before 1999, which coincides with a period of lower demand shock synchronization. This finding is supported by our analysis of the minutes of the Governing Board of the SNB for the period between 1982 and 1993. The discussions and decisions of the board show that Swiss monetary policy was largely guided by policy rate changes of the Bundesbank. The SNB routinely set the policy rate below the policy rate of the Bundesbank to enforce an implicit exchange rate target.

We review developments in monetary policy and exchange rate regimes in Norway since the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Norway has traditionally had a monetary policy regime geared towards exchange rate stability. The long history with fixed exchange rates as "normalcy" may be one factor which explains the rather late transition to inflation targeting in Norway. This "fear of floating" may seem hard to explain today. We look at five episodes, in 1992, 1998, 2008, 2014 and 2020, respectively, through the lens of the prevailing monetary regime in real-time. What if we had reacted "as if" under the opposite regime?

This review offers a comprehensive perspective on income inequality literature in Central–Eastern European (CEE) nations, with a specific focus on six countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia. By thoroughly examining existing research, this review uncovers the underlying factors and root causes contributing to varying income inequality levels and trends across CEE countries. The investigation is conducted through a systematic literature review and network analysis, focusing on the literature published since 1990, mainly on recent studies. The review is structured around three thematic frameworks (concept and measures, evidence, and causes). These three strands of the literature review not only offer a comprehensive picture of income inequality in CEE countries but also identify critical research gaps for further studies. The review underscores several critical areas for improvement within CEE studies. These include addressing gaps in geographical and temporal coverage, utilizing alternative measurements of income inequality, and investigating the causes of diverging trends in income inequality among CEE countries. Moreover, there is a pressing need to expand the understanding of the determinants influencing income inequality in these nations, which presents a significant opportunity for future research.

After centuries of metallic monies, for a long time, our understanding of fiat money had remained rudimentary and often controversial. Successive regimes eventually failed. The end of the Bretton Woods system marked the moment when the link between fiat money and gold was severed and when the possibility of letting exchange rates float became possible. The small open economies adopted various arrangements. Informed by these experiments, the understanding of monetary policy substantially progressed, leading to the widespread adoption of the expected inflation-targeting strategy with similar inflation targets. As a result, exchange rate variability has declined. The US dollar dominance was maintained and even increased. Yet, new challenges have emerged. The long period of interest rates stuck at the effective bound effectively suspended the use of the strategy. Then, during the post-pandemic surge in inflation rates, inflation forecasts became highly imprecise.

This study examines the effects of manufacturing trade and natural resource rents (NRRs) on manufacturing growth in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) from 1996 to 2020. While industrialization plays an important role in the process of economic growth and poverty reduction, descriptive evidence shows a very low level of manufacturing growth in ECOWAS. The instrumental variables approach with fixed effects is applied to address the endogeneity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity and heterogeneity issues. We find a positive (negative) effect of manufacturing trade, manufacturing exports and intra-ECOWAS trade (NRRs) on manufacturing growth while manufacturing imports and total trade are insignificant. However, additional findings show that their effects (manufacturing trade, NRRs) vary from one country to another. Furthermore, we reveal the presence of the Laffer natural resource Curve (inverted U). Finally, the effect of manufacturing trade on manufacturing growth is mediated via NRRs. ECOWAS policymakers must rely on both manufacturing trade and intra-trade in the ECOWAS region to boost manufacturing growth. Also, better management of natural resource rents associated with good trade policies is needed to stimulate manufacturing growth.

This paper investigates the effects of taxation on income inequality in an unbalanced panel of 45 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1980–2018. We use two-stage least squares and the instrumental variables quantile regression estimates. We find that taxation widens income inequality and that the increasing effects of taxation on income inequality are higher in the most unequal countries than in the least unequal ones. The paper provides evidence that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa should improve the progressivity of their tax systems, so that taxation policy can be used to reduce income inequality.

In this paper, we revisit the Canadian experience with floating exchange rates since 1950. Canada was a pioneer in successfully adopting a floating exchange rate during the Bretton Woods pegged exchange rate regime. Since then, most advanced countries have followed the Canadian example. A key finding of our paper based on historical narrative and econometric analysis is that economic performance under floating depended on its monetary policy performance as Milton Friedman originally argued in his seminal 1953 article making the case for floating exchange rates. Canadian monetary policy achieved low and stable inflation once it adopted inflation targeting as a nominal anchor. Also, Canada’s floating exchange rate provided it with a modicum of insulation from external shocks, especially commodity price shocks that influenced both the level and volatility of the real exchange rate over the past three decades. The Canadian experience with floating (along with that of other small open economies such as Australia, New Zealand and Sweden) combined with inflation targeting became a global model for sound monetary policy.

We analyze the impact of quantitative easing (QE) on economic sentiment variables (business and consumer confidence, uncertainty, and volatility) within three large and advanced economies (Europe, Japan, and the US), an area which has been left relatively unexamined. We observe a strong response of the economic sentiment variables in the US to a QE shock. Over a longer time-horizon, the forecast error variance decompositions show that the US is the only economy where the QE shock accounts for a large and persistent portion of the variance in the economic sentiment variables across the different specifications used. The shocks in Japan and Europe tend to account for a very small amount of the variance in the corresponding variables, even at longer time horizons.