We test the risk taking channel of exchange rate appreciations using firm-level data from private and public firms in ten Asian emerging market economies during 2002-2015. Since foreign currency (FX) debt at the firm level is not observed for the Asian economies, we approximate the FX debt of a...

This paper reviews analytical work carried out by central banks that participated in the Autumn Meeting of Central Bank Economists on The evolving inflation process which the BIS hosted on 28-29 October 2005. The paper first discusses efforts to document the univariate statistical properties of...

Accommodative monetary policy during the financial crisis was instrumental in preventing a deeper recession. Views differ, however, on how long such measures should be kept in place. At the heart of this debate is the notion that a protracted period of policy accommodation could create...

Asian central banks have adopted monetary policy frameworks over the past decade that have, by and large, worked well both to ensure price stability during the pre-crisis period and to navigate the shoals during the recent international financial crisis. Inflation concerns in recent years...

Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of 'financial repression.' Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...

According to standard economic theory, fiscal policy should be counter-cyclical. In the neoclassical smoothing model of Barro (1979), a government should optimally run surpluses in good times and deficits in bad times. That is the same a government should do, though for different reasons, in the...

This paper investigates the transmission channel of macroprudential instruments in a closed economy DSGE model with a rich set of financial frictions. Banks' decisions on risky retail loan concessions are based on borrowers' capacity to settle their debt with labor income. We also introduce...

What can history can tell us about the relationship between the banking system, financial crises, the global economy, and economic performance? Evidence shows that in the advanced economies we live in a world that is more financialized than ever before as measured by importance of credit in the...

In a panel of OECD countries, we investigate the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on output and employment, and how these vary with the state of the business cycle, monetary policy, the level of public debt, the current account, and the strength of the financial cycle. The estimation...

Iceland was a high inflation country from the second half of the seventies and until the middle of the eighties. During the middle of the nineties inflation in Iceland, at less than 2% p.a., was among the lowest in the OECD. In this paper we analyse the roots of high inflation in Iceland and the...