Ever since the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system, gold has retained its function as an important monetary commodity (Baur and Lucey, 2010), and continues to provide important inflation forecasting information to monetary policy setters (Tkacz, 2007). However, Capie et al. (2005) highlight the instability of gold price dynamics through time, attributing it to unpredictable political attitudes and events. In this paper, we investigate gold price dynamics under different inflation regimes and stock market conditions using UK and US index-linked Treasury bond data. We show that gold lost its role as an inflation hedge after May 1997 in the UK, and after 2003 did not act as an inflation hedge in the US, supporting the argument that gold is an inflation hedge only in periods of high inflation and inflation expectations. Further, we show that gold retained its safe haven status throughout the sample period in both countries, but it did not act as a stock market hedge in the UK except during the 2008-9 global financial crisis. Finally, we conduct an event-study analysis of the impact of QE announcements from four leading central banks on the gold price in US dollars. While the QE announcements of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank exerted a strong and weak influence on gold, respectively, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan's QE announcements had no discernible impact on the gold price.

PurposeAt the heart of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) are substantial trade preferences, which coupled with the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) grant a wide range of goods produced in qualified African countries duty-free access to the USA. To be AGOA-eligible, countries are assessed annually on their progress in undertaking appropriate economic, institutional and human rights reforms. This paper seeks to cover new grounds by exploring whether exports of apparel to US crowds out EU-15's imports from Africa.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs the gravity model to gauge trade displacement effects from the EU to the US due to AGOA, and whether the more relaxed special waiver embodied in AGOA's apparel provision causes non-knitted exports to EU-15 to be crowded out. The basic gravity model, which posits that trade between two countries is positively influenced by the economic size and negatively affected by the distance between them, is augmented with other trade inhibiting and trade facilitating variables.FindingsThe gravity model provides no evidence of trade displacement but, instead, provides support for the hypothesis of complementarity of African exports to the two key markets. A strong positive impact of the bilateral trade between the US and Africa on the EU–African trade is evident mainly before the phasing out of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). This paper finds that Special Rule beneficiaries' exports to the two markets still complement each other, but for every percentage increase in exports to the USA, there is a less than proportionate increase in exports to EU-15 indicating a higher utilisation of the special waiver. This paper also provides evidence for complementary apparel exports to both LDCs (least developing countries) and non-LDCs, with stronger effects on non-LDCs and the non-knitted sector.Research limitations/implicationsFuture work could consider the longer lifespan of AGOA following its latest renewal in 2015. This would allow one to also capture the ongoing changes in EU trade arrangements in particular implementation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). This new agreement comes with more flexible rules of origin requiring single transformation step instead of the double step. As most African nations are still in the process of adopting EPAs, new research can shed more light on complementary or displacement effects once these agreements are adopted.Originality/valueSince the main intent of AGOA is to enhance Africa's integration into the global economy by encouraging trade and investment, generate employment and increase productivity and per capita income growth, its impact on Special Rule beneficiaries' exports to the US has been extensively examined. However, the indirect effects of this trade agreement on African exports to other key markets providing similar preferences such as the EU has not been fully explored. This study also covers new grounds by examining whether there has been any apparel trade displacement from the EU to the US, as a result of the Act, over 2001–2016 period right from AGOA's inception.

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oWe investigate whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) can explain UK inflation in the 1970s. We confront the identification problem involved by setting up the FTPL as a structural model for the episode and pitting it against an alternative Orthodox model; the models have a reduced form that is common in form but, because each model is over-identified, numerically distinct. We use indirect inference to test which model could be generating the VECM approximation to the reduced form that we estimate on the data for the episode. Neither model is rejected, though the FTPL model substantially outperforms the Orthodox. But by far the best account of the period assumes that expectations were a probability-weighted combination of the two regimes. Fiscal policy has a substantial role in this weighted model in determining inflation. A similar model accounts for the 1980s but this role of fiscal policy is much diminished.

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