First published in 1998, this wide-ranging and in-depth volume from specialists in economics and statistics examines leading indicators, the timing of cyclical turning points, firm behaviour, financial indicators, economic policy recommendations, transition economies and the service sector in relation to Finland’s bid for European Monetary Union membership.

This volume is dedicated to the memory and the achievements of Professor Sir Clive Granger, economics Nobel laureate and one of the great econometricians and applied economists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It comprises contributions from leading econometricians and applied economists who knew Sir Clive and interacted with him over the years, and who wished to pay tribute to him as both a great economist and econometrician, and as a great man. This book was originally published as a special issue of Applied Financial Economics.

This is a reprint of a previously published book. It consists of a series of papers by experts in the field on how the exchange rate volatility of the 1980s affected the financial policies of international firms.

State-of-the-art research from academics and policymakers on the role of and challenges to monetary policy during the ongoing financial crisis.

'All of the papers share a high level of practical relevance and usefulness that is sometimes missing in economic research. Indeed, the reader will find that very issue taken up as the theme of Paul Klemperer's delightful essay, and all five papers under the heading of "econometric theory" will be extremely useful for most applied researchers. I hope that the reader will also share my feeling of gratitude toward Ralf Becker and Stan Hurn for putting together this outstanding permanent record of some of the conference's most important contributions.' - From the foreword by James D. Hamilton, University of California, San Diego, US This authoritative collection of papers covers a broad spectrum of topics in theoretical and applied economics and econometrics. The tone of the book is set by Paul Klemperer's contribution on using and abusing economic theory, in which academics are encouraged to widen the scope of their analyses beyond the confines of elegant models which sometimes lack 'real-world' detail. As a result, many of the chapters in this volume share a high degree of practical relevance.

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

In this second collection of his writings on financial markets (the first, On Exchange Rates, covered international finance), Jeffrey Frankel turns his attention to domestic markets, with special attention to how national monetary policy is handled. The decade of the 1980s left many central bankers disillusioned with monetarism, so that the question of the optimal nominal anchor remains an open one. In this second collection of his writings on financial markets (the first, On Exchange Rates, covered international finance), Jeffrey Frankel turns his attention to domestic markets, with special attention to how national monetary policy is handled. The fifteen papers are divided into three sections, each introduced by the author. They cover, respectively, optimal portfolio diversification, indicators of expected inflation, and the determination of monetary policy in the face of uncertainty. In the first section, Frankel explores what information the theory of optimal portfolio diversification can give the macroeconomist. In the second section, he considers what economic variables central bankers might use to gauge whether monetary policy is too tight or too loose. And in the final section, he looks at the range of uncertainty over policy effects and how that complicates coordination of macroeconomic policymaking. The book concludes with a sympathetic analysis of nominal GDP targeting.