As a result of the Asian crisis, methods of coping with volatile international capital markets have received considerable attention from observers and policymakers. It has been argued that the imposition by Chile of a nonremunerated reserve requirement on external borrowing played a useful role...

Many central banks around the world are gradually shifting from a system of direct controls towards the implementation of monetary policy through market-oriented instruments, including refinance facilities. This paper reviews the use of refinance instruments in a sample of industrialized...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on the measurement of central bank autonomy. We distinguish inputs that constitute the building blocks in the literature, and the literature that builds on them. Issues including sensitivity analysis, robustness, and endogeneity are discussed. The...

The People''s Bank of China (PBC) has made great strides in modernizing its monetary policy frameworks but their effectiveness will diminish as the sophistication of the economy increases. Empirical evidence supports maintaining a reference to money in China''s monetary strategy and enhancing...

We calculate indexes of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indexes for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although...

As a result of the Asian crisis, methods of coping with volatile international capital markets have received considerable attention from observers and policymakers. It has been argued that the imposition by Chile of a nonremunerated reserve requirement on external borrowing played a useful role...