100 years after Böhm-Bawerks death and nearly 70 years after Keynes has died there is still fundamental controversy about the factors which determine the interest rate in the long run. While Economists in the Austrian tradition see it as solely driven by real phenomena, Keynesian authors mainly...

Some fundamental issues of fiscal and monetary policy are discussed within a stock-flow-consistent macroeconomic framework for an open economy. The core of the model is the financial sector with both a capital market and a money market and correspondingly differing interest rates. Further key...

100 years after Böhm-Bawerks death and nearly 70 years after Keynes has died there is still fundamental controversy about the factors which determine the interest rate in the long run. While Economists in the Austrian tradition see it as solely driven by real phenomena, Keynesian authors mainly...

This paper explores zero lower bound (ZLB) economics. The ZLB is widely invoked to explain stagnation and it fits with the long tradition that argues Keynesian economics is a special case based on nominal rigidities. The ZLB represents the newest rigidity. Contrary to ZLB economics, not only...

The theoretical foundation of inflation targeting was laid out by the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) in his groundbreaking treatise, Interest and Prices, published originally in German in 1898. Here he proposed price stability as the rule for monetary policy. Today, inflation...

This paper provides a critique of zero lower bound (ZLB) economics which has become the new orthodoxy for explaining stagnation. ZLB economics is an extension of pre-Keynesian economics which attributes macroeconomic dysfunction to rigidities and market imperfections. The ZLB is the latest...

We present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral. Setting a...

This essay examines in detail the properties of a well functioning monetary system - defined as money plus the mechanisms to execute payments - in both the short and long run, drawing on both theory and the lessons from history. It stresses the importance of trust and of the institutions needed...

We study the effects of nominal debt on the optimal sequential choice of monetary and debt policy. When the stock of debt is nominal, the incentive to generate unanticipated inflation increases the cost of the outstanding debt even if no unanticipated inflation episodes occur in equilibrium....