A key lesson of the 2007 - 2009 global financial crisis (GFC) was the importance of containing systemic financial risk and the need for a "macroprudential" approach to surveillance and regulation that can identify system-wide risks and take appropriate actions to maintain financial stability. By...

Recent research on central bank governance has focused mainly on their monetary policy task. As the sub-prime loan market turmoil reminded us - central banks play a crucial role in financial markets not only in setting monetary policy, but also in ensuring their soundness and stability. In this...

This paper studies monetary policy committee transparency (MPCT) based on a new index that measures central bankers' educational and professional backgrounds as disclosed through central bank websites. Based on a novel cross-sectional data set covering 75 central banks, we investigate the...

We study the curious patterns of gold holding and trading by central banks during 1979-2010. With the exception of several discrete step adjustments, central banks keep maintaining passive stocks of gold, independently of the patterns of the real price of gold. We also observe the...

We develop a comprehensive index of the transparency of central banks regarding their policy framework to promote financial stability for 110 countries from 2000 to 2011 and examine the determinants and effects of this transparency. We find that the degree of transparency increased in the 2000s,...