This study investigates the evolution of central bank profits as fiscal revenue - or: seigniorage - before and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008/9. Focusing on a select group of central banks, namely: the Bank of England, United States Federal Reserve System, Bank of Japan,...

At the start of 1999, a new policy regime was introduced in Europe that included the launch of the euro and the establishment of a centralized control over monetary policy common to the eleven European Union (EU) countries that decided to participate.(2) The objective of this paper is to assess...

Following an analysis of the forces behind the global capital flows paradox" observed in the era of advancing financial globalization, this paper sets out to investigate the opportunity costs of self-insurance through precautionary reserve holdings. We reject the idea of reserves as low-cost...

This paper sets out to investigate the forces behind the so-called "global capital flows paradox" and related "dollar glut" observed in the era of advancing financial globalization. The supposed paradox is that the developing world has increasingly come to pursue policies that result in current...

Approaching the issue of mounting global imbalances from the perspective of the "Bretton Woods II hypothesis," this paper argues that the popular preoccupation with China's supposed export-led development strategy is misplaced. It also suggests, similar to Japan's depression, subdued growth in...

It is widely perceived that today's conventional monetary wisdom, and the common practice of monetary policy based thereupon, is essentially monetarist by nature, if not by name. One objective of this paper is to assess whether monetarism has had a lasting effect on the theory and practice of...

Challenging the conventional wisdom that structural problems are to blame for the euro area's protracted domestic demand stagnation, this paper sets out to shed some fresh light on the role of the ECB in the ongoing EMU crisis. Contrary to the widely held interpretation of the ECB as an...

This paper investigates the phenomenon of persistent macroeconomic divergence that has occurred across the eurozone in recent years. Optimal currency area theory would point toward asymmetric shocks and structural factors as the foremost candidate causes. The alternative hypothesis pursued here...