Among emerging market currencies, the RMB holds the most potential to become widely used internationally, due to China‘s large economic size, diversified trade structure and network, macroeconomic stability, and high growth rates - both current and expected. Yet, foreign access to...

This paper discusses costs, benefits, and implementation challenges of a possible currency union between Belarus and Russia. It shows that Belarus and Russia are economically closely linked but nevertheless do not fulfill all quot;optimal currency areaquot; criteria, especially the macroeconomic...

In 1871-73, newly unified Germany adopted the gold standard, replacing the silver-based currencies that had been prevalent in most German states until then. The reform sparked a series of steps in other countries that ultimately ended global bimetallism, i.e., a near-universal fixed exchange...

Foreign exchange intervention (FXI) is a highly debated topic. Yet, comprehensive and comparable data on FXI is hard to find. This paper provides a new dataset of FXI covering a large number of countries over the period 2000-20 at monthly and quarterly frequencies. It includes publicly available...

This paper analyzes the legal foundations of central bank digital currency (CBDC) under central bank and monetary law. Absent strong legal foundations, the issuance of CBDC poses legal, financial and reputational risks for central banks. While the appropriate design of the legal framework will...

We provide a multidimensional characterization of monetary policy frameworks across three pillars: Independence and Accountability, Policy and Operational Strategy, and Communications (IAPOC). We construct the IAPOC index by analyzing central banks’ laws and websites for 50 advanced economies,...

In this paper, we discuss the modern history of monetarism and its alternatives, as well as the changing empirical relationship of various measures of money and inflation. After demonstrating that previous naïve correlations between money and inflation as established in the 20th century...