The Bernanke-Blinder closed economy model suggests that macroprudential policies aimed at bank lending will affect the domestic long-term interest rate. In an open economy, domestic shocks to long-term rates are likely to influence capital flows and the exchange rate. Currency movements feed...

Central banks have undertaken a revolution in monetary policy. They reluctantly abandoned conventional wisdom designed to keep them out of political trouble. This paper looks at this revolution through the lens of the divergent perspectives of the IMF and the BIS. The Jeremiahs predicted this...

In mid-September 2008, following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, international interbank markets froze and interbank lending beyond very short maturities virtually evaporated. Despite massive central bank support operations and purchases of key assets, many financial markets remained impaired...

Serious fiscal vulnerabilities arising from many years of high government/GDP ratios have created new and complex interactions between public debt management and monetary policy. Although their formal mandates have not changed, recent balance sheet policies of many central banks have tended to...

Few financial variables are more fundamental than the 'risk free' real long-term interest rate because it prices the terms of exchange over time. During the past 15 years, it has dropped from a range of 4 to 5% to a range of 0 to 2%. By late 2011, cyclical factors had driven it close to zero....

Monetary policies pursued in response to the financial crisis have shown that changes in central bank balance sheets have major macroeconomic consequences. The New Classical Macroeconomics, which gained increasing sway from the late-1980s, had led to an exclusive focus on the policy rate and a...

The global long-term interest rate now matters much more for the monetary policy choices facing emerging market economies than a decade ago. The low or negative term premium in the yield curve in the advanced economies from mid-2010 has pushed international investors into EM local bond markets:...

One area where international monetary cooperation has failed is in the role of surplus or creditor countries in limiting or in correcting external imbalances. The stock dimensions of such imbalances - net external positions, leverage in national balance sheets, currency/maturity mismatches, the...