This paper considers the meaning of domestic and international systemic risk. It examines scenarios that have been adduced as creating systemic risk both within countries and among them. It distinguishes between the concepts of real and pseudo-systemic risk. We examine the history of episodes...

In this paper, we describe the evolution of the Federal Reserve's swap lines from their inception in 1962 as a mechanism to forestall claims on US gold reserves under Bretton Woods to their use during the Great Recession as a means of extending emergency dollar liquidity. We describe the Federal...

We argue that recent currency crises reflect clashes between fundamentals and pegged exchange rates, just as did crises in the past. We reject the view that crises reflect self-fulfilling prophecies that are not closely related to measured fundamentals. Doubts about the timing of a market attack...

Canada, like many countries, has recently experienced difficulties in achieving money growth stability and money supply independence. Based on the buffer-stock view of money-holding as well as the credit market approach to the money supply, this paper suggests that the problems have arisen from...

It is crucial that central banks and regulatory authorities be aware of effects of asset price inflation on the stability of the financial system. Lending activity based on asset collateral during the boom is hazardous to the health of lenders when the boom collapses. One way that authorities...

The recent consensus view, that the gold standard was the leading cause of the worldwide Great Depression 1929-33, stems from two propositions: (1) Under the gold standard, deflationary shocks were transmitted between countries and, (2) for most countries, continued adherence to gold prevented...

Monetary policy regimes encompass the constraints or limits imposed by custom, institutions and nature on the ability of the monetary authorities to influence the evolution of macroeconomic aggregates. This paper surveys the historical experience of both international and domestic (national)...

The specie standard that prevailed before 1914 was a contingent rule. Under the rule specie convertibiltity could be suspended in the event of a well understood, exogenously produced emergency, such as a war, on the understanding that after the emergency had safely passed convertibility would be...

We review the conduct and scale of official intervention by monetary authorities in the U.S.A., Japan, and West Germany since the Plaza Agreement. Relative to trading volume and the stock of internationally traded assets denominated in foreign currencies, intervention is small--scale and...

In this paper we examine the evidence for two competing views of how monetary and financial disturbances influenced the real economy during the national banking era, 1880-1914. According to the monetarist view, monetary disturbances affected the real economy through changes on the liability side...