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...

Motivated by the traditional business cycle approach of Burns and Mitchell (1946), we explore cyclical similarities in financial conditions over time in order to improve our understanding of financial cycles. Looking back at 120 years of data, we find that financial cycles exhibit behaviour...

Should a monetary authority lean against the build-up of financial imbalances? We study this policy question in an environment in which there are recurring cycles of financial imbalances that develop over time and eventually collapse in a costly manner. The optimal policy reflects the trade-off...

This paper examines whether monetary policy reaction function matters for financial stability. We measure how responsive the Federal Reserve's policy appears to be to imbalances in the equity, housing and credit markets. We find that changes in these policy sensitivities predict the later...

This paper examines past evidence of prolonged periods of foreign exchange reserves accumulation in the Asia-Pacific region. One empirical challenge is to identify periods of reserve accumulation that are sufficiently large and persistent to be categorised as prolonged. Several proxies for...

We study the impact of US quantitative easing (QE) on both the emerging and advanced economies, estimating a global vector error correction model (GVECM). We focus on the effects of reductions in the US term and corporate spreads. The estimated effects of QE are sizeable and vary across...

EM Asia has seen a transformation of its monetary policy environment over the past 2 decades. By far, the most relevant change has been the maturing of its financial systems and the growing relevance of the global financial cycle: financial inclusion has spread, financial markets have deepened...

This paper argues that a measure of lending conditions - Senior Loan Officer (SLO) surveys - offers important insights into the monetary transmission mechanism. Using a Global VAR (GVAR) and SLO survey data from 16 countries, we document bank lending standards' significant role in explaining the...

How do monetary policy spillovers complicate the trade-offs faced by central banks face when responding to commodity prices? This question takes on particular relevance when monetary authorities find it difficult to accurately diagnose the drivers of commodity prices. If monetary authorities...