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...

Most theoretical central bank models use short horizons and focus on a single tradeoff. However, in reality, central banks play complex, long-horizon games and face more than one tradeoff. We account for these issues in a simple infinite-horizon game with a novel tradeoff: higher rates deter...

This paper finds that asset prices on Oslo Stock Exchange is the single most important block of data to improve estimates of current quarter GDP in Norway. Other important blocks of data are labor market data and industrial production indicators. We use an approximate dynamic factor model that...

Can the central bank of a small open economy be mandated with the maintenance of both fixed exchange rates and monetary independence, and still succeed in the long term? Looking at a pioneering experiment put in place by the National Bank of Belgium, this article shows how foreign exchange...

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...

Modern central banks do not only announce the interest rate decision, they also communicate a "story" that explains why they reached the particular decision. When decisions are made by a committee, it could be difficult to find a story that is both consistent with the decision and representative...

If central banks value the ex-post accuracy of their forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate. We explore whether this "forecast adherence" has influenced the monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Norges Bank, the two central...

There are two main approaches to modelling monetary policy; simple instrument rules and optimal policy. We propose an alternative that combines the two by extending the loss function with a term penalizing deviations from a simple rule. We analyze the properties of the modified loss function by...

How do monetary policy committee (MPC) members form their views about the appropriate interest rate? To what extent do they change their minds during the deliberations in the interest rate meeting? How important is the Chairman? The theoretical literature makes assumptions about these issues. We...

This paper documents Norges Bank’s role in the long transition period from a fixed exchange rate regime to inflation targeting in Norway. It is shown that the Bank’s leadership and influential department leaders wanted more exchange rate flexibility from early on. However, due to the...