This paper revisits Canada’s pioneering experience with a flexible exchange rate over the period 1950–62. It examines whether the floating rate was the best option for Canada in the 1950s by developing and estimating a New Keynesian small open-economy model of the Canadian economy. The model...

Monetary policy is modeled as being governed by a known rule, except for a time-varying target rate of inflation. The variable target can be thought of either as standing in for discretionary deviations from the rule or as the outcome of a policymaking committee that is unable to arrive at a...

We report the results of an experimental analysis of monetary policy decision making under uncertainty. A large sample of economics students played a simple monetary policy game, both as individuals and in committees of five players. Our findings - that groups make better decisions than...

Firms in emerging markets are exposed to severe financial frictions and credit constraints that are exacerbated by the sudden stop of capital inflows. Can monetary policy offset this external credit squeeze? We show that although this may be the case during moderate contractions (or in partial...

Central banking transparency is now a topic of great interest, but its impact on the implementation of monetary policy has not been studied. This paper documents that anticipated changes in the target federal funds rate complicate open market operations. We provide theoretical and empirical...

Emerging markets do not handle adverse shocks well. In this paper, we lay out an argument about why emerging markets are so fragile, and why they may adopt contractual mechanisms—such as a dollarized banking system—that increase their fragility. We draw on this analysis to explain why...

Traditionally, aggregate liquidity shocks are modeled as exogenous events. This paper analyzes the adequate policy response to endogenous exposure to systemic liquidity risk. We analyze the feedback between lender-of-last-resort policy and incentives of private banks, determining the aggregate...

Historical narratives typically associate financial crises with credit expansions and asset price misalignments. The question is whether some combination of measures of credit and asset prices can be used to predict these events. Borio and Lowe (2002) answer this question in the affirmative for...

The data across time and countries suggest the level and variance of inflation are highly correlated. This paper examines the effect of trend inflation on the ability of the monetary authority to ensure a determinate equilibrium and inflation stability in a sticky-price model. Trend inflation...

This short paper employs individual voting records of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England to study heterogeneity in policy preferences among committee members. The analysis is carried out using a simple generalization of the standard New Keynesian framework that allows...