This paper considers what we argue was the first experiment of a exchange rate band. This experiment took place in Austria-Hungary between 1896 and 1914. The rationale of introducing this policy rested on precisely those intuitions that modern target zone literature has recently emphasized: the...

Inflation in advanced economies is low by historical standards but there is no threat of deflation. Slower economic growth is caused by supply-side constraints rather than low inflation. Below-the-target inflation does not damage the reputation of central banks. Thus, central banks should not...

The last decades have shown a tendency towards higher central bank transparency. It became customary for central bankers to explain their monetary policy decisions in detail and for them to publish inflation forecasts. This leads to the question of how central bank transparency is entangled with...

In a large sample of countries across different geographic regions and over a long period of time, we find limited country- and variable-specific effects of central bank transparency on forecast accuracy and their dispersion among a large set of professional forecasts of financial and...

Securing central bank independence (CBI) is considered a vital and common practice in a large number of countries, since this independence is often associated with favorable economic performance, and it isolates monetary policy from the distortions of political business cycles, associated with...

The empirical literature on central banking has found measures of central bank independence/conservatism to be negatively correlated with inflation and inflation variance across countries. But the cross-country approach has been criticised for its focus on policy outcomes instead of policies,...