On 18-19 June 2004, the BIS held a conference on "Understanding Low Inflation and Deflation". This event brought together central bankers, academics and market practitioners to exchange views on this issue (see the conference programme in this document). This paper was presented at the workshop....

Household borrowing has grown considerably in many countries over the past two decades, both in absolute terms and relative to household incomes. Much of the increase can be viewed as a rational response by households to the effects of easing liquidity constraints on households, and lower...

This paper examines episodes of current account adjustment in industrial countries over the past 30 years. We find that they were typically associated with a sizeable slowdown in domestic growth and a large exchange rate depreciation. There was no discernable change in the nature of capital...