Financial stability understood as a situation when the financial system smoothly performs its function of allocating capital and adverse shocks are unlikely to be amplified has been for long a key concern for policymakers and in particular for monetary authorities. However until 10 years ago most ...

What is the relation between monetary policy and financialstability policy? How can they be distinguished? How similar or different are they? Should they have the same or different goals? How should they be conducted? Should they be coordinated or conducted separately? Should they be conducted by the ...

, and this creates seignorage revenues. Inflation unexpectedly rises and this lowers the real value of public debt. Rolling over this debt is cheaper as the price of newly issued debt rises. And finally, economic activity rises, so tax revenues increase and social...

their power or remit. These include everything from enhanced financial regulation to quasi-fiscal policy to mitigating economic inequality. Some recent populist proposals appear to be based on the presumption that central banks can issue large quantities...

The 'Great Contraction' in global economic activity triggered by the financial crisis and the extraordinary fiscal and monetary measures that public authorities had to undertake in order to put the economy back on track by putting public finances under heavy strains and leading to extremely low ...

Sixty years ago, Milton Friedman questioned the usefulness of the optimal control approach because of policymakers’ imperfect knowledge of the economy and favored instead a simple rule approach to monetary policy (1947, 1948). These are still live issues, despite the development of powerful techniques ...

Long-term interest rates have for long played an ambiguous role in the operation of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that created the Federal Reserve set the monetary policy objective to be: '... to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment stable prices and moderate long-term ...

Central bank independence is one of the most remarkable pieces of institutional architecture fostered by economic thinking in the last half century. Theoretical studies in the 1980s stressed central bank independence as a precondition to bringing...

On September 2008 Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the world became aware that the financial crisis that had been unfolding for months was far more serious than expected. Months later it became clear that the financial crisis of 2008-2009 was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression ...

In response to the current global crisis the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world have implemented diverse policy measures including purchasing a wide range of securities lending to financial institutions intervening in foreign exchange markets and paying interest on reserves. ...