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...

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...

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 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...

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...

Asian central banks have adopted monetary policy frameworks over the past decade that have, by and large, worked well both to ensure price stability during the pre-crisis period and to navigate the shoals during the recent international financial crisis. Inflation concerns in recent years...

In the wake of the global financial crisis, policymakers, investors, and lenders analyzed the lead-up to the meltdown to see what changes could prevent another near-collapse. The result: a new focus on how macroprudential policy can reduce systemic risk. In this report we explore the emerging...

The global financial crisis (2008-09) led to a sharp contraction in both Euro Area (EA) and US real activity, and was followed by a long-lasting slump. However, the post-crisis adjustment in the EA and the US shows striking differences—in particular, the EA slump has been markedly more...

This paper provides an overview of Chinese financial and trade integration in recent decades, and the challenges facing China in the coming years. China had been a prime example of export-led growth, benefiting from learning by doing, and by adopting foreign know-how, supported by a complex...

The Greek sovereign debt crisis has raised some important issues, not only with regard to the effectiveness of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as an optimal currency area, but also as to whether or not a member state should exit the euro zone in the face of unsustainable debt problems,...