This document contains the text of the 1998 Central Banking Lecture delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science on June 4th. It starts by asking what factors have been behind the remarkable retreat of inflation that has taken place internationally since the mid-eighties,...

One of the most significant economic developments of recent years in industrialized countries has been the increasing orientation of macroeconomic policies - and of monetary policies in particular - to achieving lower inflation rates. This has led to a move from low inflation to price stability...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of movements in nominal exchange rates in smooting cyclical imbalances between countries, as explained by the literature on optimal currency areas.

This paper is an attempt to provide an updated assessment of what we know and what do not know about the impact of monetary policy on the economy and what implications follow for the conduct of monetary policy in today's world. Firstly, we discuss the conditions under which monetary policy can...

What we shall concentrate on in this paper is the way in which the strategy and tactics of monetary policy are currently being articulated in this current context. We document in Section 2, the common adoption of price stability as the overriding priority. This does not, however, prevent the...

This paper argues that in the presence of distortions and market imperfections it may be rational for governments to monitor short-run fluctuations of the external account in order to anticipate and therefore avoid difficulties, even though the true external constraint is binding only in the...

This paper provides a conceptual framework to analyze the main economic issues raised by Spain's integration into the EEC and by the vast economic reforms associated with the 1992 European Internal Market. The "EEC cum 1992" event can be described as a major anticipated permanent shock with both...