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...

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...

With the insight of 130 years of history, this paper tries to answer three questions: how did changing international monetary and financial conditions shape the targets and tools of central bank cooperation? What factors influenced its intensity? Did a structured organisation, such as the BIS,...

The relationship between democracy and globalisation has been the focus of substantial policy and academic debate. Some argue that democracy and globalisation go hand in hand suggesting that unrestricted international transactions leads to increased political accountability and transparency....

This paper provides new evidence on the rise of the dollar as an international currency, focusing on its role in the conduct of trade and the provision of trade credit. We show that the shift to the dollar occurred much earlier than conventionally supposed: during and immediately after World War...

The paper examines the exercise, the efficiency, and the legitimacy of the monetary policy-making process. The goal of central bank autonomy in recent times is the outcome of a demand for price stability. The realisation of autonomy is also a consequence of the fragmentation of national decision...

Although Central Banks have pursued the same objectives throughout their existence, primarily price and financial stability, the interpretation of their role in doing so has varied. We identify three stable epochs, when such interpretations had stabilised, ie: 1.The Victorian era, 1840s to 1914; 2....

The increase in the TARGET2 balance for the Bundesbank has led to a debate in Germany about the appropriate interpretation and policy response, if any. In this paper we review the evidence for the current account financing interpretation, and find it wanting in explaining the data in 2012. BIS...

This paper discusses the economics of how Bitcoin achieves data immutability, and thus payment finality, via costly computations, ie "proof-of-work". Further, it explores what the future might hold for cryptocurrencies modelled on this type of consensus algorithm. The conclusions are, first,...

The spread of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in finance could help to improve the efficiency and quality of supervision. This paper makes the case for embedded supervision, ie a regulatory framework that provides for compliance in tokenised markets to be automatically monitored by reading...