The costs of unemployment usually are stated in terms of the amount of aggregate income that is foregone because of resources left idle. Although useful, this method does not provide all of the information necessary for normative analysis.
A complex tracking system, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) is used to measure and monitor the U.S. economy. This article surveys the main data sources currently used in the NIPA. It is not primarily an article about methodology, but focuses instead on the raw inputs to the process: Who is answering what kinds of questions?
This article extends the analysis of price-level targeting to a model including the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve. We examine the inflation-output variability tradeoffs implied by optimal inflation and price-level rules. In previous work with the Neoclassical Phillips Curve, we found that the choice between inflation targeting and price-level targeting depended on the amount of persistence in the output gap.
The last decade of the 20th century brought about many economic and financial changes in the economies of the former communist countries. This article provides an overview of the developments that took place in the areas of financial markets and institutions and monetary policy in three of the most advanced transition economies, namely, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.
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