Using newly collected discount rate data for six Swiss cities, we find no evidence of increasing integration during a 30-year period of lightly regulated free banking. We attribute this to two structural issues: banks had incentives to protect their local monopolies, and the inherent instability...

The marked turnaround in Russia's foreign trade in 2023 exerted strong downward pressure on the Russian rouble, which lost around 30% of its value. Global oil prices were declining in the first half of the year, the EU import embargo on Russian oil depressed prices even further; and on top of...

Empirical evidence suggests consumers rely on their shopping experiences to form beliefs about inflation. In other words, they "learn by shopping". I introduce this empirical observation as an informational friction in the New Keynesian model and use it to study its consequences for the...

This paper analyzes, using a VAR model, the effects of US central bank monetary policy announcements, and information shocks from this authority regarding its economic outlook on Mexican financial and macroeconomic variables. Shocks are identified by combining a high-frequency strategy with sign...

Monetary policy governance - how monetary policy objectives are determined, how decisions are made and who makes them - determines the quality and effectiveness of monetary policy decisions. In this paper, we examine some desirable and some adverse outcomes associated with different governance...