The paper takes a critical look at the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of prevailing explanations for low real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates over long horizons and finds them incomplete. The role of monetary policy, and its interaction with the financial cycle in particular, deserve...

Monetary policy has been in the grip of a pincer movement, caught between growing financial cycles, on the one hand, and an inflation process that has become quite insensitive to domestic slack, on the other. This two-pronged attack has laid bare some of the limitations of prevailing monetary...

Has financial globalisation compromised central banks' ability to manage domestic financial conditions? This paper tackles this question by studying the dynamics of bond yields encompassing 31 advanced and emerging market economies. To gauge the extent to which external financial conditions...

Prevailing explanations of the decline in real interest rates since the early 1980s are premised on the notion that real interest rates are driven by variations in desired saving and investment. But based on data stretching back to 1870 for 19 countries, our systematic analysis casts doubt on...

This paper studies the interaction between monetary policy and macroeconomic stability in a model with two distinguishing features. First, financing - cash flows - underpins all economic activity, with banks generating deposits by granting loans. Money is non-neutral as the policy interest rate...

The recent global financial crisis has led central banks to rely heavily on "unconventional" monetary policies. This alternative approach to policy has generated much discussion and a heated and at times confusing debate. The debate has been complicated by the use of different definitions and...

Global current account imbalances have been at the forefront of policy debates over the past few years. Many observers have recently singled them out as a key factor contributing to the global financial crisis. Current account surpluses in several emerging market economies are said to have...

This paper argues that incorporating information about the financial cycle is important to improve measures of potential output and output gaps. Conceptually, identifying potential output with non-inflationary output is too restrictive. Potential output is seen as sustainable; yet experience...

This paper questions the appropriateness of popular analytical frameworks that focus on current accounts or net capital flows as a basis for assessing the pattern of cross-border capital flows, the degree of financial integration and the vulnerability of countries to financial crises. In the...

A popular strategy for estimating output gaps is to anchor them to structural economic relationships. The resulting output gaps, however, are often highly sensitive to numerous auxiliary assumptions inherent in the approach. This complicates their use in policymaking. We illustrate the point...