There is growing presumption that central banks have a significant role to play in addressing environmental challenges, especially climate change. This article explains, on the basis of both theoretical and empirical evidence, that attempting to use existing central bank powers to tackle climate...

While the appearance of debit and credit cards is similar, the attributes have significant differences, particularly when it comes to account overdrafts. This does not suggest that credit cards are somehow superior products, as complaints abound concerning credit card fees. Nevertheless,...

Bank debit cards may look like credit cards, but they certainly do not act like them when it comes to account overdrafts. This does not suggest that credit cards are better than debit cards, as complaints abound concerning the transparency of fees charged to consumers for credit card...

Drawing on the 2016 update of the IMF's Central Bank Legislation Database, this paper examines differences in central bank legal frameworks before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Examples from select countries show that many central bank laws have undergone changes in objectives,...

Since its establishment in 1998, the European Central Bank (ECB) has come of age. During this period, its legal framework has been put to the test sufficiently to allow for a proper assessment of the working of this system in practice. This article focuses on the relationship between the ECB and...

This paper evaluates the macroeconomic impact on the euro area (EA) of the imposition of tariffs by simulating a multi-country New Keynesian model featuring the effective lower bound (ELB) on the EA monetary policy rate. The main results are as follows. First, the bilateral tariff dispute...

In the past four to five decades, inflation has fallen around the world, with median annual global consumer price inflation down from a peak of 16.6 percent in 1974 to 2.6 percent in 2017. This decline began in advanced economies in the mid-1980s and in emerging market and developing economies...