Independent central banking is reviewed as it emerged first under the gold standard and later with an inconvertible paper money. Monetary and credit policy are compared and contrasted as practiced by the 19th century Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. The lesson is that wide operational...

Yen carry trades have traditionally been viewed in narrow terms purely as a foreign exchange transaction. However, evidence from the waxing and waning of balance sheets of foreign banks operating in Japan points to a broader notion of the carry trade. Yen liabilities fund not only pure currency...

Recent research has found that the dynamics of the New Keynesian model are very different when the nominal interest rate is zero. Improvements in technology shocks and reductions in the labor tax rate lower economic activity and the size of the government purchase multiplier can be as large as...

We study the interaction between population demographics, the desire for redistribution in the economy, and the optimal inflation rate in a deterministic economy with capital. The intergenerational redistribution tension is intrinsic in the general equilibrium life-cycle models we use. Young...

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) conducts policy by adjusting the Singapore dollarfs effective exchange rate so as to achieve macroeconomic goals for the economyfs inflation rate and output gap. Estimates of a policy rule of the Taylor type, except with exchange rate appreciation...

Empirical studies have found that a low interest rate environment accelerates firmsf investment and debt financing, leading to subsequent balance sheet problems in many countries in recent years. We examine the mechanism whereby firmfs debt financing and investment become more accelerated and...

We develop a dynamic credit risk model for the case that banks compete to collect their loans from a firm falling in danger of bankruptcy. We apply a game-theoretic real options approach to investigate bankfs optimal strategies. Our model reveals that the bank with the larger loan amount, namely...