This paper argues that in reserve currency issuing economies at the effective lower bound, outright transfers from the central bank to households are both more equitable and more effective in achieving monetary policy objectives than asset purchases or negative interest rates. It shows that...

The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections...

The assessment provides evidence of market segmentation across Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), leading to excess liquidity, and an uneven playing field for Islamic banks that might affect their growth. Liquidiy management has been a long-standing concern in...

This paper models the relationship between short-term rates and excess reserves in an interest rate corridor as a logistic function estimated for the Eurosystem. The estimate helps to identify conditions in which short-term rates become unanchored, that is, they move away from the policy rates...

Monetary policy space remains constrained by the lower bound in many countries, limitingthe policy options available to address future deflationary shocks. The existence of cashprevents central banks from cutting interest rates much below zero. In this paper, we considerthe practical feasibility...

The level and trend in cash use in a country will influence the demand for central bank digital currency (CBDC). While access to digital currency will be more convenient than traveling to an ATM, it only makes CBDC like a bank debit card-not better. Demand for digital currency will thus be weak...

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...

Many central banks in low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are modernising their monetary policy frameworks. Standard statistical procedures have had limited success in identifying the channels of monetary transmission in such countries. Here we take a narrative approach, following Romer...

This paper examines oversight issues that underlie the potential growth and risks in mobile payments. International experience suggests that financial authorities can develop effective oversight frameworks for new payment methods to safeguard public confidence and financial stability by...

This paper analyzes the monetary policy framework in Kazakhstan. The authorities have been successful in containing inflation in the context of a managed exchange rate regime. Over the past two years, the central bank has taken steps to enhance its ability to regulate liquidity in the financial...