This paper provides evidence on what the term structure (for maturities of twelve months or less) tells us about future inflation in ten OECD countries. The empirical results on the information in the term structure contrast with those that find that the level of interest rates help forecast the future level of inflation. Instead, they indicate that for the majority of the countries in the sample, the term structure does not contain a great deal of information about the future path of inflation. The results for France, the United Kingdom and Germany tell a different story, however. In these countries, the term structure contains a highly significant amount of information about future changes in inflation. The evidence in this paper suggests that central banks for most of the countries studied here should exercise some caution in using the term structure of interest rates as a guide for assessing inflationary pressures in the economy, as is currently under consideration in the U.S. central bank. Although there is significant information in the term structure about the future path of inflation for a few of the countries, this is not a result that is true in general. The empirical evidence does reveal, however, that for every country studied except the United Kingdom, there is a great deal of information in the term structure of nominal' interest rates about the term structure of real' interest rates. This finding is an extremely useful one because it suggests that for most countries researchers can examine observable data on the nominal term structure to provide them with information about the behavior of the real' term structure.

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.

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.

Nonlinear Dynamics of Complex Systems describes chaos, fractal and stochasticities within celestial mechanics, financial systems and biochemical systems. Part I discusses methods and applications in celestial systems and new results in such areas as low energy impact dynamics, low-thrust planar trajectories to the moon and earth-to-halo transfers in the sun, earth and moon. Part II presents the dynamics of complex systems including bio-systems, neural systems, chemical systems and hydro-dynamical systems. Finally, Part III covers economic and financial systems including market uncertainty, inflation, economic activity and foreign competition and the role of nonlinear dynamics in each.

It is often suggested that the slope of the term structure of interest rates contains information about the expected future path of inflation. Mishkin (1990) has recently shown that the spread between the 12-month and 3-month interest rates helps to predict the difference between the 12-month and 3-month inflation rates. His approach however, lacks a theoretical foundation, other than the (rejected) hypothesis that the real interest rate is constant. This paper applies a simple existing theoretical framework, which allows the real interest rate to vary in the short run but converge to a constant in the long run, to the problem of predicting the inflation spread. It is shown that the appropriate indicator of expected inflation can make use of the entire length of the yield curve, in particular by estimating the steepness of a specific nonlinear transformation of the curve, rather than being restricted to a spread between two points. The resulting indicator, besides having a firmer theoretical foundation does a relatively good job of predicting the inflation rate over the period 1960 to 1988.

Current perspectives on the Phillips curve, a core macroeconomic concept that treats the relationship between inflation and unemployment. In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the “Phillips curve” became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the top economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy. Contributors Lawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson

This book provides a manual on quantitative financial analysis. Focusing on advanced methods for modelling financial markets in the context of practical financial applications, it will cover data, software and techniques that will enable the reader to implement and interpret quantitative methodologies, specifically for trading and investment. Includes contributions from an international team of academics and quantitative asset managers from Morgan Stanley, Barclays Global Investors, ABN AMRO and Credit Suisse First Boston. Fills the gap for a book on applied quantitative investment & trading models Provides details of how to combine various models to manage and trade a portfolio