After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the...

A measure of the neutral policy interest rate can be used to gauge the stance of monetary policy. We define the neutral rate as the real policy rate consistent with output at its potential level and inflation equal to target after the effects of all cyclical shocks have dissipated. This is a...

The debt ceiling debate could be ended right now given that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins. Further, this simple change would lift the veil on how current monetary operations work and thereby demonstrate clearly that a currency-issuing government...

We examine the economic consequences of an interest-bearing design of the Central-Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and extend the discussion to an open-economy context with trade and capital flows. We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to simulate a baseline scenario with...

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...

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...

This paper investigates the state, development and drivers of banking market integration in the member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) by employing interest rate data. We first conduct a principal component analysis and find evidence for both increasing monetary...

This study investigates the current state of eurozone banking market integration by applying price convergence and cointegration measures to mortgage and short-term corporate loan rates. These two measures of integration often lead to contradicting conclusions and are therefore comparatively...

Cook and Hahn (1988) argue that discount-rate-change announcements were used by the Federal Reserve to signal market participants about movements in the federal funds rate throughout the 1973-79 federal funds rate targeting period. However, Roley and Troll (1984) and Smirlock and Yawitz (1985)...

Post great financial crisis (GFC) of 2008-2009, there has been a surge in the macroeconomics literature on aggregate uncertainty. Although the recent literature has recognized adverse real effects of global uncertainty shocks in EMEs, the role of monetary policy in mitigating these effects is...