Specific ideas about the Fisher relation between real and nominal interest rates and more general ideas about the nature of the central bank's duty to support the financial system in times of crisis were important to the Monetarist re-assessment of the causes of the Great Depression and what...

In a framework closely related to Diamond and Rajan (2001) we characterize different financial systems and analyze the welfare implications of different LOLR-policies in these financial systems. We show that in a bank-dominated financial system it is less likely that a LOLR-policy that follows...

South Africa appears to share some of the characteristics (property price boom, easing of monetary policy, strong domestic demand growth) of asset price booms in industrial countries that were often followed by a period of weak growth. The international experience suggests that a number of...

This paper discusses the role of foreign exchange interventions in the inflation-targeting regime, focusing on the Czech experience since 1998. It concludes that the case for foreign exchange interventions is not clear in an inflation targeting regime both from the theoretical and empirical...

This paper presents a New Keynesian model that dwells on the role of banks in the cost channel of monetary policy. Banks extend loans to firms in an environment of monopolistic competition by setting the loan rate according to a Calvo-type staggered price setting approach, which means that the...

This paper investigates the optimal monetary policy response to a shock to collateral when policymakers act under discretion and face model uncertainty. The analysis is based on a New Keynesian model where banks supply loans to transaction constrained consumers. Our results confirm the...

I analyze how the introduction of financial frictions can affect the trade-off between output stabilization and inflation stability and whether, in the presence of financial frictions, the optimal outcome can be realized or approached more closely if monetary policy is allowed to react to...

The revival of a multilateral exchange rate system (ERS) with one single anchor currency and binding global rules for national exchange rate management is not a viable or realistic option. It is more realistic that the present 3-polar ERS in the medium term could dynamically enlarge to a 4-polar...

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by Norges Bank which is recognized as a successful forecast targeting central bank. It is reasonable to expect that Norges Bank produces inflation forecasts that are on average better than other forecasts, both 'naïve' forecasts, and forecasts from...

We use robust control to study how a central bank in an economy with imperfect interest rate pass-through conducts monetary policy if it fears that its model could be misspecified. The effects of the central bank's concern for robustness can be summarised as follows. First, depending on the...