Whether a theoretical system is realistic or not has been a concern in economics, particularly in monetary theory, over the past century. Following John R. Hicks' proposal that a realistic monetary theory could be constructed along an evolutionary path, starting with the workings of a real...

The paper analyzes why households in transition economies prefer to hold sizeable shares of their assets in cash at home rather than in banks. Using survey data from ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries, I document the relevance of this behavior and show that cash preferences...

At their essence, blockchains are digital sequences of numbers coded into computer software that permit the secure exchange, recording, and broadcasting of transactions between individual users operating anywhere in the world with Internet access. Like most technological changes, the development...

As the recent financial crisis has revealed, the state is central to the stability of the money system, while the chaotic privately-owned banks reap the benefits without shouldering the risks. This book argues that money is a public resource that has been hijacked by capitalism. Mary Mellor...

Previous research has suggested that pegged exchange rates are associated withlower inflation than floating rates. In which direction does the causality run?Using data from a large sample of developing countries from 1984 to 2000, weconfirm that “hard” pegs (currency boards or a shared...

[...]This article demonstrates that the Bank Holiday that beganon March 6, 1933, marked the end of an old regime, and theFireside Chat a week later inaugurated a new one. TheEmergency Banking Act of 1933, passed by Congress onMarch 9—combined with the Federal Reserve’s commitmentto supply...

Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as theprocess by which a central bank uses its influence overthe supply of money to promote its economic objectives. Forexample, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools ofmonetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [FederalReserve]...

[...]This paper examines how repo contracting conventionsevolved in the 1980s. In the next section, we consider therevival of repo financing in the 1950s and the contractingconventions associated with that revival. Section 3 describeshow the rising level and volatility of interest rates and...

[...]In this paper, I survey the academic literature onblockholders and corporate control. As with any survey paper,I must be selective. Thus, I focus on empirical research, as Ibelieve that much of what we know about blockholders hascome through empirical investigations as opposed totheoretical...

[...]The overall conclusion drawn from the research presented isthat monetary policy appears to have less of an impact on realactivity than it once had—but the cause of that change remainsan open issue. The conference papers explored threehypotheses en route to that finding. First, the...