In January 2003, the Federal Reserve introduced primary credit as its main discount window lending program. The primary credit program replaced the adjustment credit program, which, subject to a number of restrictions, had generated a stigma associated with borrowing from the Fed. Eliminating or...

Over the course of the recent liquidity crisis, the Federal Reserve made several changes to its primary credit lending facility such as narrowing the spread between the primary credit rate and the target funds rate and increasing the term of the borrowing. In this paper, we use the model...

Freeman (1996a) is the first to formulate a model in which (i) debts are repaid with money and (ii) there can arise liquidity problems which give rise to a role for a central bank discount window. I ask whether this payment system is truly essential in his model. It is not because there is...

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a single European currency project proves to be a failure. Although it was designed to limit the discretionary monetary policy of the national governments and to stimulate the economic exchanges within the European Union, the euro seems to be...

We study the effects of nominal debt on the optimal sequential choice of monetary policy. When the stock of debt is nominal, the incentive to generate unanticipated inflation increases the cost of the outstanding debt even if no unanticipated inflation episodes occur in equilibrium. Without full...

Eric Tymoigne and Randall Wray's (T&W, 2013) defense of MMT leaves the MMT emperor even more naked than before (excuse the Yogi Berra-ism). The criticism of MMT is not that it has produced nothing new. The criticism is that MMT is a mix of old and new, the old is correct and well understood,...

In response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and many other central banks have adopted unconventional monetary policy instruments.  We investigate if one of these, purchases of long-term government debt, could be a valuable addition to conventional...

A measure of the neutral policy interest rate can be used to gauge the stance of monetary policy. We define the neutral rate as the real policy rate consistent with output at its potential level and inflation equal to target after the effects of all cyclical shocks have dissipated. This is a...

Although the title seems to be a contradictio in terminis, this paper shows that there are a small eclectic number of central banks with private shareholders. This paper reviews this selected group of central banks on which surprisingly little has been published. The first challenge is to...