This paper argues that serious fiscal vulnerabilities arising from many years of high government debt will create new and complex interactions between public debt management (PDM) and monetary policy (MP). The paper notes that, although their formal mandates have not changed, recent balance...

This paper reviews the role of long-term interest rates in international monetary transmission and related policy challenges in the wake of exceptionally easy US monetary policy. It employs a panel VAR model to examine the impact of a very low US term premium on relatively small open Asian...

Central banks of major advanced economies have maintained a very accommodative monetary policy stance in the last few years. However, concerns have surfaced that the transmission of low policy rates to lending rates has been weaker than in the past. Has the transmission of policy rates to...

Several countries are concurrently experiencing historically low inflation rates and ageing populations. Is there a connection, as recently suggested by some senior central bankers? We undertake a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in a panel of 22 countries over the 1955–2010 period. We...

A model of imperfectly competitive banks is examined under asymmetric information about borrower quality. Greater bank competition and a lower risk-free rate raise the screening costs of lending, which can result in pooling Nash equilibria with credit booms. Such equilibria are characterised by...

The departure from the Modigliani-Miller conditions, due for instance to market incompleteness, asymmetric information or taxation, tends to increase the importance of indirect channels by which monetary policy affects the level of economic activity in emerging market economies (EMEs). The bank...

We introduce a structural dynamic network model of the formation of lending relationships in the unsecured interbank market. Banks are subject to random liquidity shocks and can form links with potential trading partners to bilaterally Nash bargain about loan conditions. To reduce credit risk...

Accommodative monetary policy during the financial crisis was instrumental in preventing a deeper recession. Views differ, however, on how long such measures should be kept in place. At the heart of this debate is the notion that a protracted period of policy accommodation could create...

Following the experience of the global financial crisis, central banks have been asked to undertake unprecedented responsibilities. Governments and the public appear to have high expectations that monetary policy can provide solutions to problems that do not necessarily fit in the realm of...