Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944-1971) when only the US had to? We argue that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to back currency in circulation with gold reserves,...

This paper discusses key legal issues in the design of Board Oversight in central banks. Central banks are complex and sophisticated organizations that are challenging to manage. While most economic literature focuses on decision-making in the context of monetary policy formulation, this paper...

Effective risk management at central banks is best enabled by a sound framework embedded throughout the organization that supports the design and execution of risk management activities. To evaluate the risk management practices at a central bank, the Safeguards Assessments Division of the IMF's...

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), financial technology has been growing rapidly and is on the agenda of many policy makers. Fintech provides opportunities to deepen financial development, competition, innovation, and inclusion in the region but also creates new and only partially...

Large price changes in industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused erratic fluctuations in the U.S. headline inflation rate. This paper compares alternative approaches to filtering out the transitory effects of these industry price changes and measuring the underlying or core level...

As central banks across the globe have responded to the COVID-19 shock by rounds of extensive monetary loosening, concerns about their inequality impact have grown. But rising inequality has multiple causes and its relationship with monetary policy is complex. This paper highlights the channels...

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...

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,...

Koreas cross border capital flows have tended to respond negatively in global risk-off episodes, resulting in volatility in the foreign exchange market and occasional policy responses in the form of foreign exchange interventions. We study the relationship between Korean capital flows and global...

The paper explores how international integration through global value chains shapes the working of exchange rates to induce external adjustment both in the short and medium run. The analysis indicates that greater integration into international value chains reduces the exchange rate elasticity...