The sub-prime crisis began in mid-2007 as a bursting of the US housing market bubble and became a truly global meltdown in 2008. Renewed instability in financial markets precipitated awareness of how policy makers must react to systemic failures. This paper discusses the primary policy issues...

Quantitative Easing (QE) has been widely used by major central banks in the recent economic and financial crisis that started in 2007. However, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) already applied QE between 2001 and 2006. This paper tries to examine the differences between BoJ-type QE and QE applied by the...

In this paper, asset price bubbles in equities and housing that were developed from August 1987 to September 2008 are examined. Monetary policy reaction functions are estimated. Results revealed that, although not successful in pricking the bubble, the Federal Reserve System did follow a...

The language of discretion offers little information about monetary policy beyond the assurance that policymakers always “do the right thing at the right time”. This language renders problematic the reconciliation of central bank independence with accountability. Monetary policymakers should...

Given the catastrophe in the world’s largest economy and the subsequent unprecedented ultra-easy money policies, policy makers around the world have to face a new environment. The resulting capital flows in emerging market economies were huge and volatile. These flows have been intermediated...

This paper reports on Bangladesh’s Financial System Stability Assessment. Considerable progress has been made in strengthening the resilience of the country's financial sector. Total assets of the banking sector have increased twofold since 2003, and credit to the private sector has risen...