We present evidence on the effects of large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England since 2008. We show that announcements about these purchases led to lower long-term interest rates and depreciations of the U.S. dollar and the British pound on announcement days,...

Although the Federal Reserve does not target the dollar, its announcements about monetary policy changes can affect the dollar’s exchange value. Before the 2007-09 financial crisis, the dollar’s value generally fell when the Fed lowered its target for the federal funds rate. Since the...

We present evidence on the effects of large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England since 2008. We show that announcements about these purchases led to lower long-term interest rates and depreciations of the U.S. dollar and the British pound on announcement days,...

We examine the effects of unconventional and conventional monetary policy announcements on the value of the dollar using high-frequency intraday data. Identifying monetary policy surprises from changes in interest rate futures prices in narrow windows around policy announcements, we find that...

Prices of commodities including metals, energy, and food have been rising at double-digit rates in recent months. Some critics argue that Federal Reserve purchases of long-term assets are fueling this rise by maintaining an excessively expansionary monetary stance. However, daily data indicate...

The Congo Basin encompasses the second largest rainforest area after the Amazon but the Congo Basin rainforest has been more preserved during the last decades with a much lower deforestation rate. At the same time, the region remains one of the least developed in the world. We use the partial...

The integration of ethanol production with combined heat and power plants is considered in this paper. An energy balance process model has been used to generate data for the production of ethanol, electricity, heat and biogas. The geographical position of such plants becomes of importance when...

Concerning production and use of biofuels, mismatch between the locations of feedstock and the biofuel consumer may lead to high transportation costs and negative environmental impact. In order to minimize these consequences, it is important to locate the production plant at an appropriate...

Local actors at community level often thrive for energy autarky to decrease the dependence on imported energy resources. We assess the potentials and trade-offs between benefits and costs of increasing levels of energy autarky for a small rural region of around 21,000 inhabitants in Austria. We...

The coincidence of banking and currency crises associated with the Asian financial crisis has drawn renewed attention to causal and common factors linking the two phenomena. In this paper, we analyze the incidence and underlying causes of banking and currency crises in 90 industrial and...