In his great work A History of the Federal Reserve System, vol. 1, Allan Meltzer contended that monetary policymakers in the Depression simply ignored the quantity theoretic prescriptions that would have prevented contractionary monetary policy. Practically, he was arguing that the Fed should...

Optimal monetary policy is studied in a model with no contractual restrictions or physical costs of changing prices. Nevertheless, the price level is sticky in a range of markup indeterminacy, and inflation occurs only when employment presses against capacity. Under full information, the...

The paper proposes three options for overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy: a carry tax on money, open market operations in long bonds, and monetary transfers. A variable carry tax on electronic bank reserves could enable a central bank to target negative nominal interest rates. A...

Central bank or International Monetary Fund lending should be regarded as a line of credit, analogous to private line-of-credit products. Contractual provisions in private line-of-credit arrangements are designed to control managerial moral hazard and provide a means for profit-maximizing...

The paper assesses the role of a Reserve Bank in the Federal Reserve System. It compares the Eurosystem with the Fed System, and offers suggestions for the Eurosystem based on the Fed's experience. A regional presence facilitates surveillance of the economy and helps a central bank to...

The monetary standard emerges out of the interaction of monetary policy with the structure of the economy. Characterization of the monetary standard thus requires specification of a model of the economy with a central bank reaction function. Such a specification raises all the fundamental issues...

The United States Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The System consists of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.; 12 Federal Reserve Banks; and thousands of member commercial banks. This entry describes the evolution of the System and of monetary policy from its...

For most of the time since 1995, the Japanese price level has declined. Since early 1999, short-term interest rates have mostly remained near zero. Also, starting in 2001, the excess reserves held by banks have risen dramatically. Many observers have concluded that central banks are powerless to...

The paper explores the relationship between financial stability, deflation, and monetary policy. A discussion of narrow liquidity, broad liquidity, market liquidity, and financial distress provides the foundation for the analysis. There are two preliminary conclusions. Equity prices are a...

Reasoning within the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) we previously recommended that price stability should be the primary objective of monetary policy. We called this a neutral policy because it keeps output at its potential, defined as the outcome of an imperfectly competitive real business...