When a small open economy experiences a sufficiently large negative export shock, it is vulnerable to falling into a zero bound trap. In addition, such a shock can have very large impact on the economy compared to the case when the zero bound is not a binding constraint. This could be one...

Presented by Eric S. Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, for the Bank of Korea and Bank for International Settlements Seminar, Household Debt: Implications for Monetary Policy and Financial Stability, Seoul, Korea, March 27, 2008

The dollar’s depreciation during the early floating rate period, 1973–1981, was a symptom of the Great Inflation. In that environment, sterilized foreign exchange interventions were ineffective in halting the dollar’s decline, but they showed a limited ability to smooth dollar movements....

We prove that the Generalized Taylor Principle, under which the nominal interest rate reacts more than one-for-one to inflation in the long run, is a necessary and (under some extra mild restrictions on parameters) sufficient condition for determinacy in a sticky price model with positive...

Financial crises and recessions have often led to significant financial reform. Perhaps the most noteworthy financial reform of the past century was the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. This month's newsletter provides historical details of events leading up to the founding of...