Over the past couple of decades, central banks have been taking steps to increase the transparency of their monetary policies through clearer communications with the public. While there are many differences between the economic challenges Japan has been struggling with in the past decade and...

Since the mid-1990s, monetary authorities in most large developed countries have backed away from foreign-exchange intervention—buying and selling foreign currencies to influence exchange rates. Switzerland’s recent experience goes a long way to illustrate why: Foreign-exchange intervention...

An examination of the possible impact on U.S. consumers and producers of placing an across-the-board tariff surcharge on imported goods.

An essay contending that a central bank interested in maintaining price stability gains little from exchange-market intervention, particularly when it acts jointly with fiscal authorities.

One way to think about monetary policy is in terms of a neutral federal funds rate, one that exerts neither inflationary nor deflationary pressures. Recent declines in worldwide investment, coupled with the growing globalization of financial markets suggest that the neutral rate may be lower...

An examination of the safe-harbor provisions of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, with a discussion of the mechanics of the leasing, the revenue impact, and an analysis of criticism that led to the demise of the program.

An analysis of possible effects on the U.S. economy of rapid depreciation of the foreign-exchange value of the dollar, that includes discussion on interest rates, prices, real GNP, and potential problems for the Federal Reserve System.

In the years prior to our recent economic crisis, foreign savings poured into the United States. Did foreign traders who happened to acquire dollars from American trade deficits merely choose to keep these funds in dollar-denominated assets? Or, did foreigners decide to increase their savings...

The head of China’s central bank is calling for countries to replace the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency with something called SDRs. Created by the IMF way back in 1969 for that purpose, SDRs never caught on. While SDRs may be declared an official international reserve asset...

Do the rising commodity prices we have seen in recent years reflect basic supply-and-demand developments in various commodity markets, or are they the fi rst signs of inflation? In practice, it’s not always easy to tell the difference - for the public or policymakers - but fundamentally...