This paper explores the link between monetary policies of large industrial countries and international credit cycles. Based on an overinvestment framework, we show that in the prevailing asymmetric world monetary system, monetary policies of large centre countries can fuel credit booms in...

Transparency has become a prominent feature of monetary policy. This paper provides an overview of central bank communication practices and is the first to systematically analyze transparency trends throughout the world and across monetary policy frameworks. It shows that increases in...

The debate about Canadian-U.S. monetary integration is surveyed. The choice is among overall monetary orders,rather than exchange rate regimes and questions of policy credibility and political accountability are crucial. Canada’s recent economic performance under inflation targets, and...

Since a series of crisis events after 2007, the discussion about the adjustment channels of current account imbalances has been revived. We discuss the effectiveness of exchange rates versus macroeconomic policies to rebalance current accounts for a set of 86 mainly emerging market economies. We...

Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...

A small macroeconomic model is constructed to study the transmission of the monetary policy conducted by the Deutsche Bundesbank (DBB) since the middle of the 1970s. For this purpose quarterly, seasonally unadjusted data for the period from 1975 to 1998 are used, that is, the period until the...

This paper investigates the impact of international shocks – interest rate, commodity price and industrial production shocks – on key macroeconomic variables in ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by using near-VAR models and monthly data from the early 1990s to 2009. In...

This paper estimates forward-looking Taylor rules for the euro area. Using the asymmetries in inflation and cyclical output developments across countries, we investigate the adequacy of the single monetary policy for each of the European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries. Notable differences...

We introduce an approach for the empirical study of the quantity theory of money (QTM) that is novel both with respect to the specific steps taken as well as the general methodology employed. Empirical studies of the QTM have focused directly on the relationship between the rate of change of the...

Using Swiss data from 1983 to 2008, this paper investigates whether growth rates of the different measures of the quantity of money and or excess money can be used to forecast inflation. After a preliminary data analysis, money demand relations are specified, estimated and tested. Then,...