Over the past twenty years, macroeconomic performance has improved in industrialized and developing countries alike. In a broad cross-section of countries inflation volatility has fallen markedly while output variability has either fallen or risen only slightly. This increased stability can be...

On 25-26 June 2009, the BIS held its Eighth Annual Conference on "Financial System and Macroeconomic Resilience: Revisited" in Basel, Switzerland. The event brought together senior representatives of central banks and academic institutions who exchanged views on this topic. This volume contains...

In recent years, central bankers throughout the world have advocated that monetary policy shift toward inflation targeting. Recent actions in the U.S. serve to highlight the desire of the Federal Reserve to keep inflation both low and stable, while downplaying the likely output and employment...

This paper decomposes output fluctuations during the 1913 to 1940 period into components resulting from aggregate supply and aggregate demand shocks. We estimates a number of different models, all of which yield qualitatively similar results. While identification is normally achieved by assuming...

This paper investigates the effects of wage indexation on the time-consistent level of inflation. Departing from previous work on time-consistent policy, we study a structural model of the economy. Indexation reduces the cost of inflation, which is inflationary, and steepens the Phillips curve,...

In response to the Global Financial Crisis, central banks engaged in large-scale asset purchases funded by the issuance of reserves. These "unconventional" policies continued during the pandemic, so that by 2022 central banks' balance sheets had grown up to ten-fold. As a result of rapidly...