This paper provides a comprehensive history of anchor or reference currencies, exchange rate arrangements, and a new measure of foreign exchange restrictions for 194 countries and territories over 1946-2016. We find that the often-cited post-Bretton Woods transition from fixed to flexible...

We explore monetary policy in a world without fractional reserve banking. In our world, banks are purely transaction institutions. Money is a form of government debt that bears interest, which can be negative as well as positive. Services of money are a factor of production. We show that the...

Forensic accounting is used to reconstruct the data on emissions, redemptions, and bills outstanding for colonial New Jersey paper money. These components are further separated into the amounts initially legislated, and the amounts actually executed. These data are substantial improvements over...

In contrast to earlier recessions, the monetary regimes of many small economies have not changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. This is due in part to the fact that many small economies continue to use hard exchange rate fixes, a reasonably durable regime. However, most of the...

This paper analyzes current stresses in the two key areas that concerned the architects of the original Bretton Woods system: international liquidity and exchange rate management. Despite radical changes since World War II in the market context for liquidity and exchange rate concerns, they...

We estimate a New-Keynesian macro model accommodating regime-switching behavior in monetary policy and in macro shocks. Key to our estimation strategy is the use of survey-based expectations for inflation and output. We identify accommodating monetary policy before 1980, with activist monetary...

This paper compares the performance of economies with different monetary regimes during the last quarter century. The conclusions include: (1) There is little evidence that inflation targeting affects performance in advanced economies, but some evidence of benefits in emerging economies; (2)...

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued fiat paper money as their principal internal medium of exchange. This system arose piecemeal across the colonies making the paper money creation story for each colony unique. It was true monetary...

The Mussa (1986) puzzle is the observation of a sharp and simultaneous increase in the volatility of both nominal and real exchange rates following the end of the Bretton Woods System of pegged exchange rates in 1973. It is commonly viewed as a central piece of evidence in favor of monetary...

We develop an empirical model of exchange rate returns, applied separately to samples of developed (DM) and developing (EM) economies' currencies against the dollar. Monetary policy stance of the global central banks, measured via a natural-language-based approach, has a large effect on exchange...