Underdeveloped financial markets and periods of high inflation have stimulated dollarization and currency substitution in the economies of Central Asia. Some authors argue that the latter can pose serious obstacles for the effective conduct of monetary policy and can affect households’...

In this paper we analyse the impact of monetary policy on total bank lending in the presence of a developed market for foreign currency denominated loans and potential substitutability between domestic and foreign currency loans. Our results, based on a panel of four biggest Central European...

This paper provides a reassessment and a restatement of the essential properties of gold standards. Second, it emphasizes the role of the Real Bills Doctrine in Federal Reserve policy as the primary cause of the Great Contraction of 1929-1933. It takes issue with recent articles and books that...

In 1981, 364 economists signed a letter to the London Times, objecting to the Thatcher Government’s anti-inflation policy. This article considers both the policy and the objections. The policy was basically a monetarist one, grounded on the view that inflation could be controlled only by...

The new generation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models seems particularly suited for conducting scenario analysis. These models formalise the behaviour of economic agents on the basis of explicit micro-foundations. As a result, they appear less prone to the Lucas critique...

Related links: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2010/q1/federal_reserve_weblinks.cfm

This paper compares the role of stochastic volatility versus changes in monetary policy rules in accounting for the time-varying volatility of U.S. aggregate data. Of special interest to the authors is understanding the sources of the great moderation of business cycle fluctuations that the U.S....

This essay argues that central bank independence is more important today than at any time in history. Because fiscal incentives for inflation grow as government debt grows, and in view of the huge run-up in government debt in the 1980s, with prospects for continued growth in the 1990s, we...

The past two and a half years have been challenging ones for the Federal Reserve. It is time now to look back--to see what we have learned--and to look forward to reshaping the policy environment, with an eye toward lessening the odds of future financial crises.

This paper tests the constancy and stationarity of mechanic version of the money multiplier model for Pakistan using monthly data over the period 1972M1-2009M2. We split the data into pre-liberalization (1972M1-1990M12) and post-liberalization (1991M1-2009M2) periods to examine the impact of...