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2422. Transitional Justice and Peace building: Considerations for policy makers,
- Author:
- Chandra Lekha Sriram
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre on Human Rights in Conflict
- Abstract:
- Peacebuilding and transitional justice are both multifaceted processes, which although often treated as if they were in opposition, may actually involve shared goals and activities. This brief outlines several points policymakers should consider when implementing programmes and formulating policies for conflict-affected countries
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2423. A Breakthrough in Justice? Accountability for Post-Election Violence in Kenya,
- Author:
- Chandra Lekha Sriram
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre on Human Rights in Conflict
- Abstract:
- Following contested elections in Kenya in December 2007, unrest and violence shook the country in January and February 2008, prompting diplomatic intervention by the international community, most notably by the former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. A negotiated solution put in place a power-sharing deal between the two main parties contesting the presidential election: the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and the Party of National Unity (PNU)
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2424. Security Matters
- Author:
- Centre for European Security Studies
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for European Security Studies
- Abstract:
- On 12 May we received the news that David Greenwood had passed away. It was expected in a way, but still it came as a shock. David had been suffering from a disease one can fight for some time, but never beat. Although at the end he was very weak and never left home anymore, David was not supposed to leave Margaret and all of us so soon.
- Topic:
- International Relations and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2425. The Taylor Rule and Interval Forecast For Exchange Rates
- Author:
- Jian Wang and Jason J. Wu
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper attacks the Meese-Rogoff (exchange rate disconnect) puzzle from a different perspective: out-of-sample interval forecasting. Most studies in the literature focus on point forecasts. In this paper, we apply Robust Semi-parametric (RS) interval forecasting to a group of Taylor rule models. Forecast intervals for twelve OECD exchange rates are generated and modified tests of Giacomini and White (2006) are conducted to compare the performance of Taylor rule models and the random walk. Our contribution is twofold. First, we find that in general, Taylor rule models generate tighter forecast intervals than the random walk, given that their intervals cover out-of-sample exchange rate realizations equally well. This result is more pronounced at longer horizons. Our results suggest a connection between exchange rates and economic fundamentals: economic variables contain information useful in forecasting the distributions of exchange rates. The benchmark Taylor rule model is also found to perform better than the monetary and PPP models. Second, the inference framework proposed in this paper for forecast-interval evaluation can be applied in a broader context, such as inflation forecasting, not just to the models and interval forecasting methods used in this paper.
- Topic:
- Economics, Exchange Rate Policy, and Models
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2426. Tax Smoothing in Frictional Labor Markets
- Author:
- David M. Arseneau and Sanjay K. Chugh
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- We re-examine the optimality of tax smoothing from the point of view of frictional labor markets. Our central result is that whether or not this cornerstone optimal fiscal policy pre- scription carries over to an environment with labor market frictions depends crucially on the cyclical nature of labor force participation. If the participation rate is exogenous at business- cycle frequencies — as is typically assumed in the literature — we show it is not optimal to smooth tax rates on labor income in the face of business-cycle shocks. However, if households do optimize at the participation margin, then tax-smoothing is optimal despite the presence of matching frictions. To understand these results, we develop a concept of general-equilibrium efficiency in search-based environments, which builds on existing (partial-equilibrium) search- efficiency conditions. Using this concept, we develop a notion of search-based labor-market wedges that allows us to trace the source of the sharply-contrasting fiscal policy prescriptions to the value of adjusting participation rates. Our results demonstrate that policy prescriptions can be very sensitive to the cyclical nature of labor-force participation in search-based environments.
- Topic:
- Markets, Labor Issues, and Tax Systems
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2427. Currency Crashes in Industrial Countries: Much Ado About Nothing?
- Author:
- Joseph Gagnon
- Publication Date:
- 02-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- Sharp exchange rate depreciations, or currency crashes, are associated with poor economic outcomes in industrial countries only when they are caused by inflationary macroeconomic policies. Moreover, the poor outcomes are attributable to inflationary policies in general and not the currency crashes in particular. On the other hand, crashes caused by rising unemployment or external deficits have always had good economic consequences with stable or falling inflation rates.
- Topic:
- Economics, Exchange Rate Policy, Inflation, and Currency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2428. Border Prices and Retail Prices
- Author:
- David Berger, Jon Faust, John H. Rogers, and Kai Steverson
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- We analyze retail prices and at-the-dock (import) prices of speciÖc items in the Bureau of Labor Statisticsí(BLS) CPI and IPP databases, using both databases simultaneously to identify items that are identical in description at the dock and when sold at retail. This identiÖcation allows us to measure the distribution wedge associated with bringing traded goods from the point of entry into the United States to their retail outlet. We Önd that overall U.S. distribution wedges are 50-70%, around 10 to 20 percentage points higher than that reported in the literature. We discuss the implications of this for measuring the size of the "pure" tradeables sector, exchange rate pass-through, and real exchange rate determination. We Önd that distribution wedges are very stable over time but there is considerable variation across items. There is some variation across the country of origin for the imported item, for our major trading partners, but not as much as the cross-item variation. We also investigate the determinants of distribution wedges, Önding that wedges do not vary systematically with exchange rates, but are related to other features of the micro data.
- Topic:
- Economics and Exchange Rate Policy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2429. On the Solvency of Nations: Are Global Imbalances Consistent with Intertemporal Budget Constraints?
- Author:
- Ceyhun Bora Durdu
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- Theory predicts that a nation's stochastic intertemporal budget constraint is satisfied if net foreign assets (NFA) are integrated of any finite order, or if net exports (NX) and NFA satisfy an error- correction specification with a residual integrated of any finite order. We test these conditions using data for 21 industrial and 29 emerging economies for the 1970-2004 period. The results show that, despite the large global imbalances of recent years, NFA and NX positions are consistent with external solvency. Country-specific unit root tests on NFA-GDP ratios suggest that nearly all of them are integrated of order 1. Pooled Mean Group error-correction estimation yields evidence of a statistically significant, negative response of the NX-GDP ratio to the NFA-GDP ratio that is largely homogeneous across countries.
- Topic:
- Debt, Budget, Global Financial Crisis, and Economic Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
2430. Labor Market Search in Emerging Economies
- Author:
- Emine Boz, Ceyhun Bora Durdu, and Nan Li
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper shows that labor markets of emerging economies are characterized by large fluctuations in wages while employment fluctuations are subdued. We find that a real business cycle model of a small open economy that embeds a Mortensen-Pissarides type of search-matching frictions can account for these aforementioned regularities. Moreover, the joint interaction of countercyclical interest rates and search-matching frictions can go a long way in accounting for higher consumption variability relative to output and countercyclical current account observed in emerging markets. Extending this baseline model to incorporate procyclical variations in the technical efficiency at which matches are generated, the model can match the unemployment variability observed in the data.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus