What are the stylized facts that characterize the dynamics of credit booms and the associated fluctuations in macro-economic aggregates? This paper answers this question by applying a method proposed in our earlier work for measuring and identifying credit booms to data for 61 emerging and...

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring credit booms and uses it to identify credit booms in emerging and industrial economies over the past four decades. In addition, we use event study methods to identify the key empirical regularities of credit booms in macroeconomic aggregates and...

Over the last twenty-five years, a set of influential studies has placed interest rates at the heart of analyses that interpret and evaluate monetary policies. In light of this work, the Federal Reserve's recent policy of "quantitative easing," with its goal of affecting the supply of liquid...

The purpose of this paper is to convince the reader that the Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond and not a fiat currency--thereby overturning 230 years of scholarly interpretation; to show that the public and leading Americans knew and acted on this fact, and to illustrate the...

Colonial Americans complained that gold and silver coins (specie) were chronically scarce. These coins could be acquired only through importation. Given unrestricted trade in specie, market arbitrage should have eliminated chronic scarcity. A model of efficient barter and local inside money is...

Despite advances in transactions technologies, paper currency still constitutes a notable percentage of the money supply in most countries. For example, it constitutes roughly 10% of the US Federal Reserve's main monetary aggregate, M2. Yet, it has important drawbacks. First, it can help...

One decade of inflation targeting in the world offers lessons on the design and implementation of inflation targeting, the conduct of monetary policy, and country performance under inflation targeting. This paper reviews briefly the main design features of 18 inflation targeting experiences,...

Available studies on asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism within Europe are invariably based on macro-economic evidence: such evidence is abundant but often contradictory. This paper takes a different route by using micro-economic data. We use the information contained in the...

We show empirically that banks' exposure to interest rate risk, or income gap, plays a crucial role in monetary policy transmission. In a first step, we show that banks typically retain a large exposure to interest rates that can be predicted with income gap. Secondly, we show that income gap...