During the 2007-09 financial crisis, there were severe reductions in the liquidity of financial markets, runs on the shadow banking system, and destabilizing defaults and near-defaults of major financial institutions. In response, the Federal Reserve, in its role as lender of last resort (LOLR),...

Limited access to the formal financial sector is a common feature of the economic environment in many emerging market and developing economies. In this paper, we examine how the level of financial inclusion affects welfare-maximising monetary policy. Our theoretical framework is based on Galí,...

This paper describes the international flow of funds associated with calm and volatile global equity markets. During calm periods, portfolio investment by real money and leveraged investors in advanced countries flows into emerging markets. When central banks in the receiving countries resist...

In analysing the performance of the international monetary and financial system (IMFS), too much attention has been paid to the current account and far too little to the capital account. This is true of both formal analytical models and historical narratives. This approach may be reasonable when...

We investigate global factors associated with bank capital flows. We formulate a model of the international banking system where global banks interact with local banks. The solution highlights the bank leverage cycle as the determinant of the transmission of financial conditions across borders...

This essay argues that the Achilles heel of the international monetary and financial system is that it amplifies the “excess financial elasticity” of domestic policy regimes, ie it exacerbates their inability to prevent the build-up of financial imbalances, or outsize financial cycles, that...

We analyse global and euro area imbalances by focusing on China and Germany as large surplus and creditor countries. In the 2000s, domestic reforms in both countries expanded the effective labour force, restrained wages, shifted income towards profits and increased corporate saving. As a result,...