The current international financial crisis is part of a perennial pattern. Today’s events echo earlier big international financial crises that were triggered by events in the U.S. financial system. Examples include the crises of 1857 1893 1907 and 1929–33. This crisis has many similarities to those ...

Monetary policy design has experienced major changes over the last twenty years. These changes had their origin in changes in macroeconomic theory, a better understanding of the importance of achieving and maintaining low inflation, and the abandonment of fixed pegs in favor of floating exchange rate ...

Central banks resort to a variety of alternative arrangements in formulating, conducting, and communicating monetary policy. One increasingly popular type of arrangement is based on a target range for inflation. In this setup the conduct of monetary policy is oriented to keeping inflation withing ...

Developing a better understanding of the costs of disinflation has long been an important objective for macroeconomic research. Since the 1980s, disinflation episodes and strategies have been studied extensively under the assumption of rational expectations. This assumption implies that central bank ...

The papers that comprise the different chapters of this volume were presented in the XVII Annual Conference on Central Banking that took place at the Central Bank of Chile Santiago during November 14 and 15 2011. While the global economic environment has changed considerably from the end of 2011 to ...

Monetary policy is made in an environment of substantial uncertainty. Consequently, academic researchers have sought to formally demonstrate the implications of uncertainty, as well as the ways in which central banks can manage it. The theoretical literature on uncertainty distinguishes between three ...

The global financial crisis that broke out 10 years ago uncovered the buildup of risks during a period of price and output stability. It challenged the previous consensus that preserving price stability was the optimal way to ensure financial stability, and led to a surge of interest in the multiple ...

The conduct of monetary policy in terms of interest rate or other rules has been extensively studied in recent research. This literature gives a central role to forecasts of future inflation and output, and the question of whether monetary policy should be forward- ooking has been subject to discussion ...