When the baby boomers joined the workforce and started saving, money supply and property prices entered a rising trajectory. We conclude that demography was the long-run driver of this process, basing our argument on data from 22 advanced economies for the 1950-2010 period. According to our life...

Despite constituting the very heart of the monetary transmission mechanism, widespreadmisconceptions still exist regarding how monetary policy is implemented. This paperhighlights the key misconceptions in this regard and shows how they have compromised theunderstanding of important aspects of...

This paper studies a modern monetary economy: trade in both goods and securities relies on money provided by intermediaries. While money is valued for its liquidity, its creation requires costly leverage. Inflation, security prices and the transmission of monetary policy then depend on the...

Despite constituting the very heart of the monetary transmission mechanism, widespread misconceptions still exist regarding how monetary policy is implemented. This paper highlights the key misconceptions in this regard and shows how they have compromised the understanding of important aspects...

Monetary economics as practiced by central bank modelers has made a great deal of progress in recent years. In a 2002 paper I interviewed research economists at four central banks and surveyed the models in use at those banks. I criticized the models for having lost all touch with statistical...

We provide new insights on the formation of inflation expectations - in particular at a time of great financial and economic turmoil - by evaluating results from a survey conducted from July 2009 through July 2010. Participants in this survey answered a weekly questionnaire about their short-,...

The remarkable stability of low domestic inflation in many countries requires explanation. In this paper, a number of competing hypotheses are evaluated on a stand-alone basis, and all are found to be inadequate. This includes the view that this outcome has been solely the result of more...

There has been mounting evidence that the inflation process has been changing. Inflation is now much lower and much more stable around the globe. And its sensitivity to measures of economic slack and increases in input costs appears to have declined. Probably the most widely supported...

Greater international economic interconnectedness over recent decades has been changing inflation dynamics. This paper presents evidence that the expansion of global value chains (GVCs), ie cross-border trade in intermediate goods and services, is an important channel through which global...

Beginning with the global financial crisis (2008) the correlation between crude oil prices and medium-term and forward inflation expectations increased leading to fears of their un-anchoring. Using the first principal component of commodity prices as a measure for global aggregate demand, we...