This paper uses the variability of money market rates to compare the conduct of the central bank's key market operation as a fixed-rate tender (FRT) or a variable-rate tender (VRT). Nowadays, leading central banks generally use FRTs or other approaches (e.g. target rates) which yield step...

This Occasional Paper analyses how significant expansions in central banks' mandates, roles and instruments can result in challenges to the independence of monetary policy. The paper reviews, in particular, some of the key challenges to central bank independence brought about by the global...

Do emerging markets need to sacrifice economic sovereignty in order to borrow more cheaply on the international capital markets? To explore this, we exploit a natural experiment following the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 when four Balkan states - Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia - received full...

Die Entschuldung von über schuldeten Staaten über eine lockere Geldpolitik bzw. über finanzielle Repression sichert den Wohlstand in den Industrieländern nicht, argumentieren die Autoren. Der mit der ultra-lockeren Geldpolitik einhergehende graduelle Fall der Produktivitätsgewinne und die...

Calculation of the unit cost of financial intermediation for 20 countries from 1970 to 2015 has produced the following results. (i) Most countries' unit costs decline and converge in the long run. (ii) Unit costs were much higher in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with high nominal rates, as...

Following the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of March 3, 1951, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) focused on free reserves - the difference between excess reserves (reserve deposits in excess of reserve requirements) and borrowed reserves - as the touchstone of U.S. monetary policy....

Supervisors sometimes have to manage both the micro- and macro- prudential dimensions of bank stability. These may either conflict or complement each other. We analyze prudential supervision by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). We find evidence of micro-prudential concerns, measured as the...

We focus on the con.ict between two central bank objectives individual bank stability and systemic stability.We study the licensing policy of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) during 1999.2002.Banks in poorly banked regions, banks that are too big to be disciplined adequately, and banks that are...

Too Big to Fail? The Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894 In the Newfoundland Bank Crash of 1894, the commercial banks in a duopolistic loan market both went under simultaneously. The banking system was "free", as central bank, deposit insurance, and lender of last resort were all absent. The...

The theory of liquidity management under uncertainty predicts that, under certain conditions, commercial banks will accumulate minimum reserve requirements linearly over the reserve maintenance period. This prediction is empirically tested using daily data (from March 2004 until February 2007)...