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...

We analyze the impact of monetary policy instruments on interbank lending rates and retail bank lending in China using an extended version of the model of Porter and Xu (2009). Unlike the central banks of advanced economies, the People's Bank of China uses changes in the required reserve ratios...

We consider independent monetary policy committees as a simple way of attaining relatively low inflation without completely sacrificing an activist role of monetary policy. If central banker¡¦s types are unknown, then for a wide range of parameters an independent monetary policy committee is...

The optimal escape from a liquidity trap involves generating private-sector expectations of a higher future price level and higher future inflation. This lowers the real interest rate and reduces the recession during the liquidity trap. The problem, emphasized by Krugman, is that central-bank...

Since the crises of the late 1990's, most emerging market economies have built up substantial positive holdings of US dollar treasury bills, while at the same time experiencing a boom in FDI capital inflows. This paper develops a DSGE model of the interaction between an emerging market economy...

Open economy macroeconomics typically abstracts from portfolio structure. But the recent experience of financial globalisation makes it important to understand the determinants and composition of gross country portfolios. This paper presents a simple approximation method for computing...

A central aspect of the recent debate on global imbalances and the US current account deficit is the role of the exchange rate peg being followed by China and other Asian economies. While one view has stressed the need for Asian currency appreciation, another focuses on the importance of fiscal...

This report identifies a set of policy lessons for China today drawn from the experience of financial deregulation, financial crisis and recovery in Scandinavia during the period 1985-2000. Although there are considerable differences between the huge Chinese economy and the small Nordic...

This paper evaluates the governance performance of four small, open economy central banks. Two of these, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, are inflation targeting; the other two, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, place...

Starting in the early 1990s, several emerging market and transition economies (EMEs) have adopted inflation targeting (IT). In this paper we discuss a number of issues that arise in this context: (a) the definition of IT, (b) the role of preconditions for IT, (c) the use of intermediate exchange...