We ask whether developing countries reap credibility gains from submitting policy to a strict monetary rule. We look at the gold standard era, 1880-1914, to test whether adoption of a rule-based monetary framework such as the gold standard increased policy credibility, focusing on sixty...

The process of European economic integration slackened in the 1960s. National markets for goods, most services and labour were not being integrated because they were not really being liberalised. The exception to this rule was financial services, one of which - the sale of long-term corporate...

This article explains that, while Walter Bagehot׳s Lombard Street had a rule about the central bank׳s role as a lender of last resort, it was not a precursor of the rules-based approach to monetary policy. Monetary policy rules came into fashion in the 1980s and 1990s when it became clear from...

There is, in theory, a plausible role for the European Union as the partner of a militarily assertive United States: the peacekeeper that follows in the wake of the peacemaker. The war in Iraq, however, has raised the possibility of a diametrically different role for Europe: as a potential...