When the baby boomers joined the workforce and started saving, money supply and property prices entered a rising trajectory. We conclude that demography was the long-run driver of this process, basing our argument on data from 22 advanced economies for the 1950-2010 period. According to our life...

This paper examines the evolving role of reserve requirements as a policy tool in China. Since 2007, the Chinese central bank (PBC) has relied more on this tool to withdraw domestic liquidity surpluses, as a cheaper substitute for open-market operation instruments in this period of rapid FX...

Despite constituting the very heart of the monetary transmission mechanism, widespreadmisconceptions still exist regarding how monetary policy is implemented. This paperhighlights the key misconceptions in this regard and shows how they have compromised theunderstanding of important aspects of...

Despite constituting the very heart of the monetary transmission mechanism, widespread misconceptions still exist regarding how monetary policy is implemented. This paper highlights the key misconceptions in this regard and shows how they have compromised the understanding of important aspects...

This paper studies a modern monetary economy: trade in both goods and securities relies on money provided by intermediaries. While money is valued for its liquidity, its creation requires costly leverage. Inflation, security prices and the transmission of monetary policy then depend on the...

Recent financial instability has called into question the sufficiency of low inflation as a goal for monetary policy. This paper discusses interwar literature bearing on this question. It begins with theories of the cycle based on the quantity theory, and their policy prescription of price...

This paper analyses firm's pricing-to-market decisions in vertically differentiated industries. We first present a model featuring firms that sell goods of heterogeneous quality levels to consumers who are heterogeneous in their income and thus their marginal willingness to pay for quality...

This paper estimates a demand equation for German M3 over the period 1971:1-1989:4, and studies its ability to predict all-German M3 during 1990:l-1992:4 and (a measure of) western German M3 during 1990:l-1994:l. Although the out-of-sample prediction errors appear serially correlated, the...

What are liquidity crises? And what can be done to address them? This short paper brings together some personal reflections on this issue, largely based on previous work. In the process, it questions a number of commonly held beliefs that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The paper is...

The recent global financial crisis has led central banks to rely heavily on "unconventional" monetary policies. This alternative approach to policy has generated much discussion and a heated and at times confusing debate. The debate has been complicated by the use of different definitions and...