The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers’ certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an...

This paper analyses the architecture of the international monetary system which preceded the international gold standard (1844-1870). It builds on a newly-created database made up of more than 100,000 weekly observations on exchange rates, interest rates, and bullion prices in the world’s six...

In 1999 Norges Bank employed 1150 persons and had 12 regional branches located in various cities across the country. In 2010, the regional branches had all been closed and the traditional central bank staff had been reduced to a good 300 persons. In the same period, an investment management unit...