Athanasios Orphanides

John C. Williams

Abstract: This paper investigates the role that imperfect knowledge about the structure of the economy plays in the formation of expectations, macroeconomic dynamics, and the efficient formulation of monetary policy. Economic agents rely on an adaptive learning technology to form expectations and to update continuously their beliefs regarding the dynamic structure of the economy based on incoming data. The process of perpetual learning introduces an additional layer of dynamic interaction between monetary policy and economic outcomes. We find that policies that would be efficient under rational expectations can perform poorly when knowledge is imperfect. In particular, policies that fail to maintain tight control over inflation are prone to episodes in which the public's expectations of inflation become uncoupled from the policy objective and stagflation results, in a pattern similar to that experienced in the United States during the 1970s. Our results highlight the value of effective communication of a central bank's inflation objective and of continued vigilance against inflation in anchoring inflation expectations and fostering macroeconomic stability.

Imperfect Knowledge, Inflation Expectations, and Monetary Policy

Alexander Michaelides

' On June 28th 2012, the small island of Cyprus became the fifth government to request an economic bail-out from the Eurozone after losing access to international capital markets. Less than a year later, a €10 billion second rescue deal was agreed upon — an unprecedented agreement that bailed in creditors of Cyprus'' two largest banks, and triggered an economic crisis that the nation still struggles to recover from today. This resourceful collection of essays provides a thorough and in depth analysis of how Cyprus reached the point of failure and what lessons this experience holds for future economic crises. The various perspectives collectively address unanswered questions, including whether the bail-in can be considered successful, why the recession was less severe than expected, and what conclusions can be drawn about stress-testing exercises across borders. Focusing on one of the (proportionately) largest crises in financial history, the case study will prove essential to policy-makers and politicians, especially in the euro area. Contents:Cyprus in Crisis: What Happened in Cyprus?:Cyprus in the Eurozone (Michalis Sarris)Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in the Cyprus Crisis: ELA, PIMCO, and Delays (Stavros A Zenios)Handling of the Laiki Bank ELA and the Cyprus Bail-In Package (Costas Xiouros)Cyprus: From Boom to Bail-In (Alexander Michaelides)What Happened in Cyprus? The Economic Consequences of the Last Communist Government in Europe (Athanasios Orphanides)Overcoming a Crisis:The Cyprus Crisis: Lessons, Challenges, Opportunities (Sofronis Clerides)Overcoming the Crisis in Cyprus (Gikas A Hardouvelis)Making the Best of It: Lessons from Ireland''s Experience in an EU/IMF Programme (Alan Ahearne)The Future of the Euro Area:Large versus Small States in the Eurozone, The Democratic Deficit, and Future Architecture (Yannis M Ioannides)The European North-South Divide: Dealing with the Poor Relative (Michael Haliassos)The Future Monetary Architecture in the Eurozone (Lorenzo Bini Smaghi) Readership: Policy-makers, especially within the Euro-Area, politicians contemplating entry into a currency union (future members of the Euro-Area) or politicians contemplating separation from a unified state while maintaining a currency union. Key Features:No competing titles in the marketContains analyses and lessons learnt from the bail-inKeywords:Cyprus Crisis;Bail-in;Stress Tests;Sovereign Debt Crisis;Banking Crisis;Euro;Emergency Liquidity Assistance'

Policy Lessons from the Cyprus Economic Crisis

The Cyprus Bail-in

Optimal Consumption Dynamics with Non-concave Habit Forming Utility

Michael D. Bordo

Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Athanasios Orphanides

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