Monetary policy rules and a normative approach to the central bank’s objective function

This study attempts to explain in an understandable manner that the central bank’s effort to keep inflation low is not an end in itself, but ultimately serves the interests of social welfare. We attempt to substantiate this argument on the basis of economic theory, based on the logic of New Keynesian models, by describing loss functions that contain welfare relevant variables and interest rules that minimise them. By using this framework, we point out that – taking into account the limits of measurability, learning and potentially non-rational expectations – decision-making rules that give considerable weight to a departure from the inflation target and take into account real economy considerations generally perform well in terms of welfare and may be considered robust in New Keynesian-type models with forward looking agents. Finally, we argue that through the strategy of inflation targeting the normative implications of the above framework can be put into practice.New_keynesian model, inflation targeting, normative approach.

Are users interested in library blogs?

The purpose of this paper is to present the Hungarian liblogosphere and to analyse their comments. Most of the library blogs target users and are intended to form a virtual community around them. This research analyses comments and tries to identify those people who read blogs and communicate through this channel. Since the emergence of web 2.0 paradigm Hungarian libraries have developed several sites trying to build virtual communities. Most of the sites built by libraries could not become as popular as librarians expected. We selected 10 library blogs targeting users and analysed all entries and all comments in a 3 months period. We tried to identify those who write comments and observe if virtual communities came up around blogs. We also identified the most popular topics of blog readers. The most surprising result of the blog analysis was that there are hardly any users who write comments. Virtual communities have been built just around a few blogs. It seems that the Hungarian liblogosphere is much more the librarians’ common virtual playground than an attractive tool for our users. We could not collect data on real readers just make conclusions from the comments. Further research should observe who are the real readers of library blogs. It is an original research

Farbige Düfte: Metonymie und verbale Synästhesie

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Csatár, Peter: Data Structure in Cognitive Metaphor Research. Metalinguistica Band/Volume 26, edited by András Kertész. Frankfurt am M., Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2014. 149 lap

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