The global financial crisis has shaken the foundations of the deceptively comfortable pre-crisis central banking world. Central banks face a threefold challenge: economic, intellectual and institutional. This essay puts forward a compass to help central banks sail in the largely uncharted waters...

The recent financial crisis has triggered a major rethink of analytical approaches and policy towards financial stability. The crisis has encouraged a sharper focus on systemic risk, the inclusion of a financial sector in macroeconomic models, a shift from a microprudential to a macroprudential...

If the criteria for an institution's success are diffusion and longevity, then central banking has been hugely successful. But if the criterion is the degree to which it has achieved its goals, then the evaluation has to be more nuanced. Historically, those goals have included a changing mix of...

This essay examines in detail the properties of a well functioning monetary system - defined as money plus the mechanisms to execute payments - in both the short and long run, drawing on both theory and the lessons from history. It stresses the importance of trust and of the institutions needed...

This paper reviews the challenges faced by central banks in recent years in order to evaluate their policy implications going forward. To highlight the genuine uncertainty surrounding the lessons to be drawn, the paper examines recent experience through two intentionally polarised perspectives,...

Do the prevailing unusually and persistently low real interest rates reflect a decline in the natural rate of interest as commonly thought? We argue that this is only part of the story. The critical role of financial factors in influencing medium-term economic fluctuations must also be taken...

In a financial system where balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes show up immediately in changes in net worth, and elicit responses from financial intermediaries, who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked to market leverage is...