In this paper I tried to show that the economic arguments in support of reserve requirements are not strong. Reserve requirements were long regarded as an essential instrument for the control of the money supply and the ultimate target variables of monetary policy. However, a substantial body of...

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This paper addresses the problems arising from the conduct of monetary policy in a lowinterest- rate environment. We examine a proposal advanced by Svensson for current Japanese monetary policy recommending first a devaluation of the Yen and a subsequent temporary exchange rate target coupled...

After the switch to a floating exchange rate in 1973, the Swiss National Bank at first adopted annual monetary targets and in the 1990s shifted to a medium-term targeting strategy. In this paper I review the SNB’s internal policy analysis, an aspect of Swiss monetary targeting that has...