Central banks hold gold reserves that are designed to build confidence in fiat currency. This confidence is undermined if the price of gold falls significantly or rises significantly. Central banks thus have an incentive to manage the price of gold. Such management is evident in fixed gold...

We extend a standard New Keynesian model both to incorporate heterogeneity in spending opportunities along with two sources of (potentially time-varying) credit spreads and to allow a role for the central bank’s balance sheet in determining equilibrium. We use the model to investigate the...

This paper examines the impact of the financial crisis of 2008, specifically the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, on the federal funds market. Rather than a complete collapse of lending in the presence of a market-wide shock, we see that banks became more restrictive in their choice of...

We study credible information transmission by a benevolent Central Bank. We consider two possibilities: direct revelation through an announcement, versus indirect information transmission through monetary policy. These two ways of transmitting information have very different consequences. Since...

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the performances of the forward guidance strategies adopted by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Norges Bank and the Riksbank, with the aim to gauge whether forward guidance via publication of an own interest rate path enhances a central bank's...

We present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral. Setting a...

We assess recent developments in monetary policy practice following the financial crisis drawing on papers from a specially convened conference in March 2010. In particular, we consider why central banks throughout the world have injected substantial quantities of liquidity into the financial...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of central bank purchases of government bonds by investigating the following three questions: Under what conditions are these purchases socially desirable, what incentive problems do they mitigate, and how large are these...

We develop a microfounded model, where agents have the possibility to trade money for government bonds in an over-the-counter market. It allows us to address important open questions about the effects of central bank purchases of government bonds, these being: under what conditions these...