Henry Thornton (1760-1815), whose major work - An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain - is celebrating its bicentennary in 2002, is considered today to be one of the most prominent classical monetary economist, in particular with regard to its seminal...

We study the characteristics of inflation targeting as a shock absorber, using quarterly data for a large panel of countries. To overcome an endogeneity problem between monetary regimes and the likelihood of crises, we propose to study large natural disasters. We find that inflation targeting...

This study examines foreign exchange intervention based on novel daily data covering 33 countries from 1995 to 2011. We find that intervention is widely used and a highly effective policy tool, with a success rate in excess of 80 percent under some criteria. The policy works very well in terms...

Several recent papers are devoted to the examination of the central banker's behaviour in an uncertain economic environment. This paper proposes, from a central banker's point of view, a synthesis of the main sources of uncertainty as well as an illustration of their effects within an analytical...

In global financial centers, short-term market rates are effectively determined in the pledged collateral market, where banks and other financial institutions exchange collateral (such as bonds and equities) for money. Furthermore, the use of long-dated securities as collateral for short...

This study examines foreign exchange intervention based on novel daily data covering 33 countries from 1995 to 2011. We find that intervention is widely used and an effective policy tool, with a success rate in excess of 80 percent under some criteria. The policy works well in terms of smoothing...