Are central banks able to isolate their domestic economy by offsetting the effects of foreign capital flows? We provide an answer for the First Age of Globalization based on an exceptionally detailed and standardized database of monthly balance sheets of all central banks in the world (i.e. 21)...

Anniversaries are occasions for remembrance and reflections on one's history. Many central banks take the occasion of an anniversary to publish books on their history. In this essay we discuss five recent books on the history of central banking and monetary policy. In these volumes, the Great...

The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers' certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an...

Though checks' popularity is now waning in favor of electronic payments, checks were, for much of the twentieth century, the most widely used noncash payment method in the United States. How did such a relatively inefficient form of payment become so dominant? This article traces the historical...

This paper deals with the relationship between deflation and economic growth. Although there are numerous theories on the potential effects of deflation on real output, empirical evidence in this field is still scarce and partial. In order to explore the relationship between prices and output in...

This short paper sets out how leaving a monetary union is not the technical impossibility many have recently claimed. It has been done often in the past, and while possibly uncomfortable can be the best available option. Examples are given

The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers' certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an...

Money throughout the world has been operating without a defined denominator. Currency names identify nationality but not value. Equal work time is now and has been the center line of gravity of currency exchange rates since the IMF began publishing the data to see it, since 1948. Adoption of an...

The National Bank of Moldova, as well as a number of other central banks in the world, has formulated as basic objective the price stability, and otherwise limiting foreign exchange interventions. These interventions are carried out in strict accordance with the objectives of foreign policy and...