For monetary policymakers worldwide, developing a practical understanding of how monetary policy transmits to the economy is a day-to-day challenge. The data such policymakers have is imperfect, the maps they use are continually redrawn. With such uncertainty, understanding this complicated issue is rarely straightforward. This book, a collaboration between some of the finest minds working on monetary theory in the world, helps to provide a foundation for understanding monetary policy in all its complex glory. Using models, case studies and new empirical evidence, the contributors to this book help readers on many levels develop their technical expertise. Students of macroeconomics, money and banking and international finance will find this to be a good addition to their reading lists. At the same time, policymakers and professionals within banking will learn valuable lessons from a thorough read of this book's pages.

This handbook explains the development and implementation of monetary policy. It examines theories and issues related to the preservation of economic activity and explores why the preservation of economic stability is a principal goal of public policy.

The strength of this book is that it summarises a vast amount of the modern literature in monetary economics. . . the book provides detailed and clear descriptions of monetary models. . . This comprehensive volume is a useful compendium of the monetary economics literature of the second half of the 20th century, which has to a certain extent been over taken by events. Paul Wachtel, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature This well-researched and finely crafted book is a valuable addition to the literature on monetary policy in developing countries. It explains the concepts and tools of monetary policy in a simple manner and discusses how monetary policy works in developing Asia in a historical context within the framework of an outward-oriented development strategy. I am not aware of any other book that covers the organisational and institutional aspects of major central banks in developing Asia. Prema-chandra Athukorala, Australian National University This book elaborates the key concepts, principles and models of inflation and monetary policy and explains how they remain relevant and useful to the design and conduct of monetary policy in developing Asia. In this rapidly growing region, price stability remains important and therefore monetary policy has gained increasing importance. Even while emphasising the importance of the classical approach, the book discusses alternative frameworks and points out areas where a consensus is emerging. The review of the literature is extensive and careful. Along with developing this theme, the book reviews the structure and governance of most central banks in the Asia-Pacific and discusses how they conduct monetary policy to achieve price stability under different monetary policy frameworks. The book fills a gap in the central banking and monetary policy literature and has no close competitors. It should be useful to both students and policymakers in developing Asia. Salim Rashid, University of Illinois, US The 1997 East Asia crisis exposed many economic policy weaknesses in the Asia-Pacific region. In his latest book, Dr Hossain provides students with a refreshing up-to-date reference text on the concepts and principles of money, banking and finance in developing countries which differ in many ways to monetary institutions and practices in developed countries, which conventional monetary textbooks focus on. I thoroughly recommend it. A.P. Thirlwall, University of Kent, UK This timely book reviews the modern literature on inflation and monetary policy, and highlights contemporary issues in the design and conduct of monetary policy for price stability in developing Asia. Akhand Akhtar Hossain surveys the evolution of central banking and provides an introduction to the structure, function and governance of central banks in selected countries in the Asia-Pacific. The author also examines the major theories, models and approaches to inflation and monetary policy, and evaluates monetary policy regimes in selected countries in the Asia-Pacific in a historical context. This eloquent and comprehensible book will prove to be invaluable to undergraduate students on monetary theory and policy as well as banking and financial courses. Researchers exploring monetary policy concepts, principles and case studies will warmly welcome this book, as will policy-makers who have an interest in macroeconomics, monetary and financial policies.

This book reviews the historical evolution of U.S. monetary policy, and then uses various methods such as mathematical models and econometric analysis to study the impact of U.S. monetary policy adjustments on the domestic economy and the spillover effects on the world economy. Finally, it summarizes the challenges faced by the Chinese economy in the post financial crisis era and proposes relevant countermeasures and suggestions for China to respond to U.S. monetary policy adjustments.

Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, central bankers around the world have been forced to abandon conventional monetary policy tools in favour of unconventional policies such as quantitative easing, forward guidance, lowering the interest rate paid on bank reserves into negative territory, and pushing up prices of government bonds. Having faced a crisis in its banking sector nearly a decade earlier, Japan was a pioneer in the use of many of these tools. Unconventional Monetary Policy and Financial Stability critically assesses the measures used by Japan and examines what they have meant for the theory and practice of economic policy. The book shows how in practice unconventional monetary policy has worked through its impact on the financial markets. The text aims to generate an understanding of why such measures were introduced and how the Japanese system has subsequently changed regarding aspects such as governance and corporate balance sheets. It provides a comprehensive study of developments in Japanese money markets with the intent to understand the impact of policy on the debt structures that appear to have caused Japan’s deflation. The topics covered range from central bank communication and policymaking to international financial markets and bank balance sheets. This text is of great interest to students and scholars of banking, international finance, financial markets, political economy, and the Japanese economy.

Contributors working at the International Monetary Fund present 14 chapters on the development of monetary policy over the past quarter century through the lens of the evolution of inflation-forecast targeting. They describe the principles and practices of inflation-forecast targeting, including managing expectations, the implementation of a forecasting and policy analysis system, monetary operations, monetary policy and financial stability, financial conditions, and transparency and communications; aspects of inflation-forecast targeting in Canada, the Czech Republic, India, and the US; and monetary policy challenges faced by low-income countries and how inflation-forecast targeting can provide an anchor in countries with different economic structures and circumstances.

This paper analyzes the nonlinear relationship between monetary policy and financial stress and its effects on the transmission of shocks to output. Results from a Bayesian Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) model show that the effects of monetary policy shocks on output growth are stronger during normal times than during times of financial stress. Monetary policy shocks are effective to ease stressed financial conditions, but have limited ability to fully contain the buildup of vulnerabilities. These results have important policy implications for central banks’ countercyclical policies under different financial conditions and for “lean against the wind” policies to address financial vulnerabilities.

Is the Mundell-Fleming trilemma alive and well? International co-movement of asset prices takes place alongside synchronized business cycles, complicating the identification of financial spillovers and assessments of monetary policy autonomy. A benchmark for interest rate comovement is to impose the null hypothesis that central banks respond only to the outlook for domestic inflation and output. We show that common approaches used to estimate interest rate spillovers tend to understate the degree of monetary autonomy enjoyed by small open economies with flexible exchange rates. We propose an empirical strategy that partials out those spillovers that are associated with impaired monetary autonomy. Using this approach, we revisit the predictions of the trilemma and find more compelling evidence that flexible exchange rates deliver monetary autonomy than prior work has suggested.

Fiscal and Monetary Policy in the Eurozone offers systematic analyses of the economic policy framework of the Eurozone and critiques current ideas about how to move forward, making it essential reading for postgraduate students of economics and of keen interest to researchers, policymakers, journalists, and financial strategists.