We consider standard monetary-policy rules with inflation-rate targets and interest-rate or money-growth instruments using a flexible-price, perfect-foresight model. There is always a locally-unique target equilibrium. There are also below-target equilibria (BTE) with inflation always below...

In the 1870s the three Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden formed the Scandinavian Currency Union. Both the adoption of gold and the monetary union were supposed to lead to price stability in and between these countries. By drawing on new indices of consumer prices the present...

We characterise the behaviour of Norwegian output, the real exchange rate and real money balances over a period of almost two centuries. The empirical analysis is based on a new annual data set that has recently been compiled and covers the period 1830-2003. We apply multivariate linear and...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility (TAF) in alleviating the liquidity shortage in USD and reducing the spread between the 3-month Libor rate and the expected policy rate. I construct a proxy for the 3-month liquidity risk premium based on...

We investigate to what extent estimated relationships of the IMF’s monetary model and their policy implications are sample dependent. This model constitutes the core of the IMF’s financial programming models for developing and emerging economies. We observe that estimates of the model’s...

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...

We use Bayesian methods to estimate the preferences of the US Federal Reserve by assuming that monetary policy is performed optimally under commitment since the mid-sixties. For this purpose, we distinguish between three subperiods, i.e. the pre-Volcker, the Volcker-Greenspan and the Greenspan...

This article sketches the origins of paper money in Norway back to the last half of the 18th century and asks why there was no circulation of full-bodied coins even after notes had become convertible into silver at par in 1842. The argument put forward is that the choice of fiat paper money...

We study overnight interbank interest rates paid by banks in Norway over the period 2006-2009. We observe large variations in interest rates across banks and over time. During the financial crisis, the interest rates are found to be substantially below indicative quotes of interest rates...