Among the various shocks that may cause financial instabilities, the bursting of asset bubbles has received most attention during the last decade. This paper discusses the risk management of financial instabilities caused by asset price crashes and evaluates the appropriate role of central...

Canada has perhaps the longest track record of adhering to a floating exchange rate regime but it may well have also been the first country to adopt a managed float during the 1950s. In spite of criticisms leveled at the Canadian government's decision to float the dollar, the remarkable feature...

This paper investigates the state, development and drivers of banking market integration in the member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) by employing interest rate data. We first conduct a principal component analysis and find evidence for both increasing monetary...

This paper examines whether monetary policy responsibilities alter the central bank's role as a bank supervisor. The analysis focuses on the United States, where the Federal Reserve System shares supervisory duties with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit...

While central banks have existed since the seventeenth century, their purpose, functions, and operations have evolved over time. Over the past two decades, the pace of reforms in terms of institutional independence and transparency has been particularly brisk. This paper examines the current...

In this survey, we present a number of arguments that question some aspects of the conventional view of central bank independence (CBI). We argue CBI is neither necessary nor sufficient for reaching monetary stability. First, CBI is just one potentially useful monetary policy design instrument...

The definition of the decline of long term yields in the light of increasing short term yields as a conundrum by Chairman Greenspan in February 2005 has generated a significant amount of research. This paper presents a study of yield curve dynamics over this period using economic surprise data...

Numerous event studies have documented that financial asset prices react very little to aggregated inflation releases in the euro area. The standard explanation for this non-response is that most of the national price data are already publicly available at the time of the final release. Contrary...

Relatively little empirical evidence is available that estimates the relationship between asset price movements and monetary policy measures. This paper, which is the first study that focus on the linkage between monetary policy and stock market prices, aims at analyzing the interaction between...

In this paper, we outline a baseline DSGE model which enables a straightforward analysis of wage bargaining between firms and households/unions in a model with both staggered prices and wages. Relying on empirical evidence, we assume that prices can be changed whenever wages are changed. This...