Iceland experienced a significant financial meltdown and subsequent economic downturn after the 2008/2009 financial crisis struck the country. It had been the worst crisis ever experienced by a small country from the late 20th century onwards. Since 1980s, Iceland's macroeconomic stability had...

The general aim of the paper is to address the doubts that too often the Central Banks’ tools and operations don’t fit for a fine tuning of the economies, and this is even more true in harsh times. The paper begins with an overview on the great failures respectively of the Federal Reserve,...

The “new” economy seems to be vulnerable to cyclical shocks that increased in magnitude and induced higher volatilities on the markets. The role assumed by state in this equation of markets’ equilibrium significantly increased. The causes of current crisis of modern economies are strongly...

Monetary policy has become difficult to characterize or follow since 2007. A debate as to whether interest rate targets or monetary aggregate targets are better indicators of policy and prospective outcomes has given way to a new credit policy built on inflating the Federal Reserve (Fed) balance...

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...

The last decade has seen a worldwide move by emerging markets to adopt explicit or implicit inflation targeting regimes. A notable and often discussed exception to this trend, of course, is China which follows pegged exchange rate regime supported by capital controls. Another major exception is...

Scholars often use Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) votes to estimate the preferences of central bankers. However, rarely do committee members on the FOMC cast dissenting votes. This article demonstrates the usefulness of using what central bankers say in FOMC meetings rather than how they...

This paper investigates the possibility of conducting an unconventional monetary policy of Quantitative easing (QE) at high interest rates using the example and experience of Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has raised the key interest rate on six occasions during the 12 months...