Recent experience from Europe and Japan shows that commercial banks generally pass negative short-term policy rates on to wholesale depositors, such as insurances and pension funds. Yet, they refrain from charging negative rates to ordinary retail customers. This paper asks whether the existing...

Large-scale asset purchases are now a conventional tool for monetary policymakers. In August 2019, Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion began for the first time since December 2015, with the federal funds rate away from the zero lower bound (ZLB). The Federal Reserve expanded the balance...

Can the aging process affect inflation? The prolonged decline of fertility and mortality rates induces a persistent downward pressure on the natural interest rate. If this development is not internalized by the monetary policy rule, inflation can be on a downward trend. Using the structure of a...

We discuss the pros of adopting government-issued digital currencies as well as a supranational digital iCurrency. One such pro is to get rid of paper money (and coinage), a ubiquitous medium for spreading germs, as highlighted by the recent coronavirus outbreak. We set forth three policy...

High-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements are a standard method of measuring monetary policy shocks. However, some recent studies have documented puzzling effects of these shocks on private-sector forecasts of GDP, unemployment, or inflation that are opposite in sign to...

High-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements are a standard method of measuring monetary policy shocks. However, some recent studies have documented puzzling effects of these shocks on private-sector forecasts of inflation, unemployment, or real GDP, which have the opposite...

This paper discusses operational issues for countries that want to reform their monetary policy frameworks. It argues that stabilizing short-term interest rates on a day-to-day basis has significant advantages, and thus that short-term interest rates, not reserve money, in most cases should be...

The political transition in the Arab Spring countries has been accompanied by a deterioration of economic and financial indicators like the Tunisian case. Therefore, this paper aims to get a deeper understanding the nature of the rule that reflects the behavior of the Tunisian monetary authority...

Does monetary policy react systematically to macroeconomic innovations? In a sample of 16 countries - operating under various monetary regimes - we find that monetary policy decisions, as expressed in yield curve movements, do react to macroeconomic innovations and these reactions reflect the...

We suggest that forward guidance, via publicly committing the central bank to future actions and creating associated expectations, fundamentally affects bank-lending decisions independently of other forms of monetary policy. To test this hypothesis, we build a forward guidance measure based on...