This paper considers the determination of aggregate price level under dispersed information.A Central Bank sets policy in response to its noisy measure of the price level, andeach agent makes its decisions by observing a subset of data. Information revealed to theagents and the bank is...

[...]Inflation targeting in Canada was not the result oflegislation. However, as in New Zealand, the inflationtarget in Canada is jointly determined and announcedby both the government and the central bank.[...]

The global financial crisis that began in mid-2007 has renewedconcerns about financial instability and focused attention onthe fundamental role of central banks in preventing andmanaging systemic crises. In response to the turmoil, centralbanks have made extensive use of both new and existing...

Central bank policymakers are not primarilyrandom number generators.1 Reading boththe financial press and the work of academics,however, one might get the opposite impression.Reporters (and the readers of their stories) seem toattach considerable importance to each Federal OpenMarket Committee...

The rapid growth of e-commerce and the Internet has led tothe development of new payment mechanisms capableof tapping the Internet’s unique potential for speed andconvenience. A recent and especially successful exampleof such a development is the personal on-line payment:a mechanism that uses...

[...]The task facing the Eurosystem is even morecomplex than that facing countries with stable monetaryregimes, where the measurement of the national andregional impact of policy has already proved to be extremelydifficult. The creation of the Eurosystem constitutes aregime shift in virtually...

[...]This article explores the inflation puzzle andinvestigates whether compensation has acted as either atemporary restraint on inflation or as the underlying sourceof a new inflation regime.2 After reviewing the recent behavior of inflation, we specify and estimate a traditionalprice-inflation...

The textbook view of the monetary transmissionmechanism rests on the central bank’s ability tomanipulate the overnight interest rate by controlling thereserve supply, followed by a rational-expectations mechanismthat ensures that movements in the overnight rate reverberateinto longer maturity...

Monetary policy operating procedures have long beendebated within the Federal Reserve and amongmonetary economists at large. For instance, economists havedisagreed about whether a central bank should utilize bankreserves or the interest rate as the policy instrument. For thetime being at least,...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...