We test a simple model of exchange rate regime choice with data for 65 non-OECD countries covering the period 1980-94.We find that the variance of output at home and in potential target c ountries as well as the correlation between home and foreign real activity are powerful and robust...

Germany prides itself in having one of the most successful central banks and currencies with respect to independence and stability. I show that not only were both imposed on the country after 1945 but that there was also initial resistance to both among German experts and officials. This is a...

Most theoretical central bank models use short horizons and focus on a single tradeoff. However, in reality central banks play complex, long horizon games and face more than one tradeoff. We account for these issues in a simple infinite horizon game with a novel tradeoff: higher rates deter...

This paper empirically studies the impact of the quality of political institutions on the link between central bank independence and inflation. Making use of data on the evolution of central bank independence over time and controlling for possible nonlinearities, we employ interaction models to...

It is often argued that deregulation of international transactions and its effects on the globalization of financial markets is behind the decline in the attractiveness of fixed exchange rate regimes. We argue that, instead, much of the recently observed decrease in the level of capital controls...

This lecture addresses three related aspects of monetary and fiscal management in Europe and elsewhere. First, I discuss the implications of economic integration for monetary and fiscal policy, especially the narrow focus on low inflation as the main objective of monetary policy. I argue that...

We analyse whether central bank independence (CBI) affects inflation in developing countries. For this purpose we have constructed a new data set for the turnover rate (TOR) of central bank governors for a very large sample of countries, which also covers the 1990s. We find that once various...

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for...