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...

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 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...

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...

Empirical evidence on whether the euro area monetary transmission process has changed is, at best, mixed. We argue that this inconclusiveness is likely to be due to the fact that existing empirical studies concentrate on the effects of a particular development on a specific transmission channel....

Central banks, which used to be so secretive, are communicating more and more these days about their monetary policy. This development has proceeded hand in glove with a burgeoning new scholarly literature on the subject. The empirical evidence, reviewed selectively here, suggests that...

Explaining exchange rates has long been an important but vexing issue in international economics and finance. In recent years, a number of studies have shown that investors' private information plays a central role in determining exchange rates. We demonstrate in this paper that the private...