To the extent that they exert a critical influence on the macroeconomic environment, monetary and exchange rate policies (MERP) are relevant for development. However, the analytical economic literature often sees nominal variables as being irrelevant for the real economy, while the multiplicity...

Many central banks whose exchange rate regimes are classified as flexible are reluctant to let the exchange rate fluctuate. This phenomenon is known as "fear of floating". We present a simple theory in which fear of floating emerges as an optimal policy outcome. The key feature of the model is...

This paper investigates the relationship between global liquidity and commodity and food prices applying a global cointegrated vector-autoregressive model. We use different measures of global liquidity and various indices of commodity and food prices for the period 1980-2011. Our results support...

To counter the sharp appreciation of the Swiss franc that set in in the wake of the European sovereign debt crisis, on September 6, 2011, the Swiss National Bank announced to enforce a minimum EUR/CHF exchange rate of CHF 1.20. We find that the simple, though elegant model for the exchange rate...

Krugman (1991)'s target zone model has become the reference of a large part of this literature. Despite its simplicity and elegance, empirical evidence has been lacking. Deriving from Krugman's model analytical expressions for the conditional volatility and density distribution close to the...

In recent years, inflation in the euro area has failed to decelerate decisively while cyclical slack built up in the economy. Is this phenomenon more than a peculiarity in recent data? Is it related to structural policy settings? Econometric analysis conducted on two decades of quarterly data...

During the first two years of monetary union, the euro's weakness surprised most market participants. Explanations proliferated ranging from fundamentals such as differences in growth prospects to psychological factors such as herd behaviour, but no single story fully accounts for the observed...

China is both a major trading partner of the United States and the largest official holder of U.S. assets in the world. The value of Chinese foreign exchange reserves peaked at just over $4 trillion in June 2014, but has since declined to $3.19 trillion as of August 2016. This very large decline...

4207 This paper investigates the impact of European Central Bank's unconventional monetary policies between 2008-2016 on the government bond yields of eight European Monetary Union countries and up to eleven different maturities. In identifying this impact, it adopts a novel econometric...

Central banks are under increased scrutiny because of the rapid growth in, and composition of, their balance sheets. Therefore, understanding the processes that shape these balance sheets and their consequences is crucial. We contribute by studying an extensive dataset of banks' liquidity uptake...