Central banks have responded with exceptional vigour to the crisis by using their traditional interest-rate tools to their limits and deploying a wide range of unconventional measures. This paper documents these responses in a systematic way, reviews the evidence about their impact, and...

This paper investigates the determinants of money demand (M3) in the euro area. It specifically examines the potential impact of financial and housing wealth on money demand. It tests the hypothesis, whether wealth associated with increases in asset prices is used to finance liquidity holdings...

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...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Monetary policy reaction functions can provide insights into the factors influencing monetary policy decisions. Empirical estimates suggest that differences exist across countries as to whether monetary policy reacts solely to expected inflation or also takes into account expected output...

Estonia gave up the exchange rate and monetary policy tools of macroeconomic management when it introduced its currency board in 1992. While the currency board arrangement served the country well during transition in the 1990s, it offers limited flexibility to implement policies that would ease...

Monetary and fiscal policies face huge challenges: the banking sector has collapsed; the economy is in the midst of a deep recession; the exchange rate has plunged; capital flows have been frozen; inflation is elevated; public debt has risen; source of revenues have disappeared; social needs have...

There is a case, but there are also counter-arguments. With sufficient forward-looking behaviour among firms and households, price-level targeting can act as a powerful built-in stabiliser through automatic shifts in inflation expectations. This stabilisation mechanism reduces the need for large...

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...

Currency boards have been portrayed as an extreme way of creating currency quality and improving monetary policy credibility in emerging market economies. Yet the link between currency board operations and credibility is far from obvious. Indeed, under the heading of currency boards, there is in...