Accommodative monetary policy during the financial crisis was instrumental in preventing a deeper recession. Views differ, however, on how long such measures should be kept in place. At the heart of this debate is the notion that a protracted period of policy accommodation could create...

The recent European economic crisis has dramatically exposed the failures of the various institutional mechanisms in place to maintain economic stability in Europe, and has unveiled the difficulty in achieving international coordination on fiscal and financial stability policies. Drawing on the...

We propose that policymakers responding to novel contingencies are subject to first-mover disadvantage. Like innovation in the private sector, developing effective solutions to novel policy problems requires a messy process of discovery, experimentation, and repeated failure. Much as...

It is well known fact that all good things, as also bad things, come to an end and business cycles pass through good and bad economic times. Economically 2010 was a year of transition from economic recession to recovery. Economies were improving in some countries and industries were showing...

By all accounts, the variety and scale of government intervention to assist individual businesses and industries, and to provide general economic stimulus during the 2008-2009 economic crisis, was extraordinary. Understandably, taxpayers have been concerned about the cost. A simple tally of...

This paper examines the fiscal and monetary policy options available to China as a sovereign currency-issuing nation operating in a dollar standard world. We first summarize a number of issues facing China, including the possibility of slower growth, global imbalances, and a number of domestic...

As a result of the recent financial crisis and the ensuing economic recession, fiscal deficits have soared in many OECD countries. As a consequence, government debt has been on the rise again after a period of stable or declining government debt. In this paper we analyze debt stabilization in a...

The current economic crisis is a complex social phenomenon, several aspects of which go beyond national borders and also cross traditional academic disciplinary boundaries. While initial academic commentary in media has typically been grounded within finance or economics disciplinary boundaries,...

Consider two views of the global financial crisis. One view looks across the border: it blames external imbalances, the unprecedented current account deficits and surpluses in recent years. Another view looks within the border: it faults domestic financial systems where risks originated in...

Per effetto della crisi economica che si è realizzata con particolare intensità nel corso del 2009, molte economie avanzate hanno intrapreso percorsi di risanamento fiscale. Nell'ambito di tali misure un ruolo non trascurabile è rappresentato dagli interventi di riduzione della spesa per il...