The link between monetary policy and asset price movements has been of perennial interest to policy makers. In this Paper we consider the potential case for pre-emptive monetary restrictions when asset price reversals can have serious effects on real output. First, we provide some historical...

My lessons from six years of practical policy-making include (1) being clear about and not deviating from the mandate of flexible inflation targeting (price stability and the highest sustainable employment), including keeping average inflation over a longer period on target; (2) not adding...

How should monetary and fiscal policy react to adverse financial shocks? If monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate, subsidising the interest rate on loans is the optimal policy. The subsidies can mimic movements in the interest rate and can therefore...

We examine empirically whether asset prices and exchange rates may be admitted into a standard interest rate rule, using data for the US, the UK and Japan since 1979. Asset prices and exchange rates can be employed as information variables for a standard `Taylor-type' rule or as arguments in an...

Most analyses of banking crises assume that banks use real contracts. However, in practice contracts are nominal and this is what is assumed here. We consider a standard banking model with aggregate return risk, aggregate liquidity risk and idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. We show that, with...

The first part of the paper analyzes the inflationary risks associated with price liberalization, the welfare costs of inflation and the difficulties of East European central banks in pursuing non-inflationary policies. The main obstacles are the low credibility of stabilization policies and a...

Some central banks have a reputation for being secretive. A justification for this behaviour that we find in the literature is that being transparent about operations and beliefs hinders the central bank in achieving the best outcome. In other words, a central bank needs flexibility and...

In response to the financial crisis of 2007-2010, many central banks are getting involved in macroprudential supervision. Central bank communication will constitute a central policy tool for that purpose. The paper asks how such communication will affect financial markets, exploiting the fact...

We propose a flexible majority rule for central bank councils where the size of the majority depends monotonically on the change in interest rate within a particular time frame. Small changes in interest rate require a small share of supporting votes, even less than 50%. We show that flexible...

We study the effects of Central Bank transparency on inflation and the output gap. We thus first identify a small analytical model, which concludes that transparency affects the variability of inflation and output and not their average levels. Then we examine whether this conjecture holds...