Does global financial integration reduce the independence of monetary policy or its effectiveness? Do flexible exchange rates offer sufficient insulation from foreign monetary and financial developments? To provide an answer to these questions, this paper summarises the outcome of ongoing...

The financial crisis and subsequent economic recession led to a rapid increase in the issuance of public debt. But large-scale purchases of bonds by the Federal Reserve, and other major central banks, have significantly reduced the scale and maturity of public debt that would otherwise have been...

We construct a measure of the short-term world interest rate using principal component analysis. Drawing on real interest rate data for 18 OECD countries for the period 1985 - 2008, persistent deviations from the world interest rate that cannot be explained by movements in the real exchange rate...

Since the start of the financial crisis, industrial country public debt levels have increased dramatically. And they are set to continue rising for the foreseeable future. A number of countries face the prospect of large and rising future costs related to the ageing of their populations. In this...