Sebastian Edwards finds that monetary policy in Iceland has been run in an effective way since approximately 2012 and contributed in a significant way to the recovery of the Icelandic economy. He then addresses two new instruments of monetary policy: currency intervention and capital controls....

There is a well-known set of empirical regularities that describe the experience of countries that peg their exchange rate as part of a macroeconomic adjustment program. Following the peg economies tend to experience an increase in GDP, a large expansion of production in the non-tradable sector,...

Exchange-rate based stabilizations, while useful in accelerating the disinflation process, typically lead to overvalued exchange rates and large current account deficits. These factors, in turn, make it difficult to sustain exchange rate pegs, placing heavy demands upon monetary policy to...

In the 1970s the Federal Reserve began a policy of targeting monetary growth. Those who viewed this as a positive development felt that such a policy would allow the Fed to signal its intentions to be firm in its pursuit of an anti-inflationary agenda. Moreover, if the Fed could pursue its...

We argue that the traditional question 'fixed vs. flexible exchange rates?' is not well-defined, because 'flexible exchange rates' does not explicitly specify any particular monetary policy. In traditional analyses, 'flexible exchange rates' was interpreted as implying a fixed money supply. But...

Distortions introduced by targeting nominal income growth, or an exchange rate peg, in the trade-off between inflation and output in the stabilization of shocks to supply and terms of trade cannot be eliminated simultaneously. If supply shocks are optimally stabilized, targeting an exchange rate...