Understanding the dynamics of inflation has become an important challenge for both policymakers and researchers over the past decade. Empirical models linking inflation and economic activity—versions of the so-called Phillips curve—have failed to account for the behavior of inflation in many ...

The deep and prolonged recession triggered by the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 led to a large increase in the unemployment rate in most advanced economies. Ten years later, at the time of writing this paper, the recession has long ended, and the subsequent recoveries have brought the ...

In recent years, we have not seen much of a negative correlation between inflation, the time series plotted in figure 1, and measures of resource slack, based on real GDP plotted in figure 2. This flattening of the Phillips curve in many countries across the world has startled monetary policymakers. ...

Chile offers an example of a country that has overcome the fear of floating by reducing balance-sheet mismatches; enhancing financial-market development; and improving monetary, fiscal, and political institutions; while strengthening policy credibility. Under the floating regime, Chile’s economic ...

The institution of central-bank independence is often lauded as a great conquest of the accumulation of knowledge and the sensible setting of policy. The economic literature is filled with arguments for why an independent central bank would lead to better outcomes. To this prior, the experience of ...

The job of central bankers is to use the monetary powers granted to them to promote price stability, sustainable growth, and a stable financial system. They do this in an environment fraught with unavoidable uncertainties. But, in conducting policy, there is one uncertainty that policymakers can and ...

Around the world, most central banks set policy by committee. This is motivated in part by the idea that groups reach better decisions than individuals and in part by a desire for representation of different geographical areas and economic constituencies in policymaking. The Bank for International ...

Central banking today faces a number of existential challenges. On the political side, and particularly after the financial crisis, the public has come to expect central banks to take on a dizzying array of responsibilities, some far beyond their power or remit. These include everything from enhanced ...

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 inflation under lasting control, and support for reform ...