In response to the Global Financial Crisis, central banks engaged in large-scale asset purchases funded by the issuance of reserves. These "unconventional" policies continued during the pandemic, so that by 2022 central banks' balance sheets had grown up to ten-fold. As a result of rapidly...

Over the past twenty years, macroeconomic performance has improved in industrialized and developing countries alike. In a broad cross-section of countries inflation volatility has fallen markedly while output variability has either fallen or risen only slightly. This increased stability can be...

The dramatic improvement in macroeconomic outcomes during the 1990s - stable, low inflation and high, stable growth - can be at least partly ascribed to improved monetary policy. Central banks became more independent and many of them adopted inflation targeting. This paper examines the potential...

We ask whether recent changes in monetary policy due to the financial crisis will be temporary or permanent. We present evidence from two surveys--one of central bank governors, the other of academic specialists. We find that central banks in crisis countries are more likely to have resorted to...

In this paper we study the degree to which increased information about monetary policy might lead to individuals coordinating their forecasts. Specifically, we estimate a series of simple models to measure the impact of inflation targeting on the dispersion of private sector forecasts of...

In this history of the first decade of ECB policy, we also discuss key challenges for the next decade. Beyond the ECB's track record and an array of published critiques, our analysis relies on unique source material: extensive interviews with current and former ECB leaders and with other...

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication -- mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...

Modern central bankers are the risk managers of the financial system. They take actions based not only on point forecasts for growth and inflation, but based on the entire distribution of possible macroeconomic outcomes. In numerous instances monetary policymakers have acted in ways designed to...