For nearly a century the US dollar has been unchallenged as the sole and later the most important reserve and intervention currency in the world. The dollar became such an important currency after the shift from the British pound which, during the gold standard, was the world's reserve currency...

We analytically derive optimal central bank portfolios in a minimum variance framework with two assets and quot;transaction demandsquot; caused by sudden stops in capital inflows. In this model, the transaction demands become less important relative to traditional portfolio objectives as debt to...

This chapter presents the results of the comprehensive literature survey and supportive empirical assessment of the potential impacts of the Financial Transactions Tax recently adopted by the European Commission in response to the significant financial sector misallocations arising from the...

World Pensions Council cofounders Vincent Bazi and M. Nicolas J. Firzli analyse the rise of natural gas as a new asset class for pension and sovereign fund stakeholders in light of the geo-institutional dynamics underpinning asset allocation and investment decisions in an era of macroeconomic...

This paper argues that using gold as collateral for highly distressed bonds would bring great benefits to the euro area in terms of reduced financing costs and bridge-financing. It is mindful of the legal issues that this will raise and that such a suggestion will be highly controversial....

This paper offers an encompassing analysis of the ECB's collateral criteria between 2001 and 2013. A comprehensive database of changes to collateral criteria is compiled and structured by asset classes. The main findings can be summarized in three stylized facts: (1) Since the outbreak of the...