The price puzzle is the association in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) of a contractionary shock to monetary policy with persistent increases in the price level. Various explanations have been investigated separately in the framework of small SVARs without any common set of variables...

The explicit concepts of a central bank and monetary policy were not fully articulated until the 20th century, although, with some degree of circumspection, they can be used retrospectively in regard to earlier times. The oldest central banks were hardly central banks in the modern sense at...