In this paper I analyze the work on exchange rates and external imbalances by University of Chicago faculty members during the university's first hundred years, 1892-1992. Many people associate Chicago's views with Milton Friedman's advocacy for flexible exchange rates. But, of course, there was...

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for...

In this paper, we discuss the evolution of central bank interactions since the early 1970s following the breakdown of the managed exchange-rate system that was negotiated at Bretton Woods. We review the most important forums or organizations through which central banks have engaged in diplomacy....

The set of monetary policy instruments has expanded since the start of the global financial crisis in the many OECD economies. Against this background, this paper analyses whether some of the new instruments should be retained in the long term when broader financial stability objectives are...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic risks associated with undesirably low inflation using a medium-sized New Keynesian model. We consider different causes of persistently low inflation, including a downward shift in long-run inflation expectations, a fall in nominal wage growth, and a...

By using a model of trade union behaviour Grüner (2010) argues that the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) led to lower wage growth and lower unemployment in participating countries. Following Grüner's model, monetary centralization lets the central bank react less flexibly to...

This paper seeks to inform about a feature of monetary policy that is largely overlooked, yet occupies a central role in modern monetary and financial systems, namely central bank collateral frameworks. Their importance can be understood by the observation that the money at the core of these...

The central bank's balance sheet has become the main instrument of monetary policy in the aftermath of the GFC and the COVID-19 health crisis. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze changes in the balance sheets' sizes and channels of base money creation in groups of countries, taking note...

Using US data, we estimate optimal policy with a probability below one that the Fed reneges on its commitment ("limited credibility") versus discretionary policy where the Fed reneges on its commitment at all periods with a probability equal to one ("zero credibility"). The transmission...

This paper compares different implementations of monetary policy in a new-Keynesian setting. We can show that a shift from Ramsey optimal policy under short-term commitment (based on a negative feedback mechanism) to a Taylor rule (based on a positive feedback mechanism) corresponds to a Hopf...