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 timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

The business cycle may be caused due to changes in monetary policy of interest rates, fiscal policy, changes in real wages, consumers and suppliers confidence of demand and supply and inventory cycles. This article examines and eliminates time lags and bandwagon effects in the business cycle of the Greek economy due to the above reasons in addition to the general direction of the index of the stock market. For example, time lags and bandwagon effect could be caused due to a reflationary policy. It will increase the level of aggregate demand, the level of economic growth, but it could create higher inflation. For example, a reflationary fiscal policy could be used to reduce the level of taxation. The disposable incomes the households accumulate lead them to increase consumption, and, therefore, output and employment. In this case we have an expansion or an upward trend in the business cycle. In contrast, a deflationary policy reduces the level of aggregate demand, growth and inflation and as a result increases unemployment. In this case, we have a recession in the business cycle. It is using the level of government expenditure and taxation to reduce the level of aggregate demand.