This book provides a uniquely comprehensive and detailed analysis of central banks within the G-20. It discusses their policies and functions in detail. Central banks use monetary policy to manage economic fluctuations and achieve price stability. Monetary policy is the control of the quantity of money available in an economy and the channels by which new money is supplied. Monetary policy is implemented either (i) through interest rate policy, whereby the central bank influences financial conditions by setting, or closely controlling, a short-term rate and by steering expectations about the interest rate forward, or (ii) through balance sheet policy, whereby the central bank influences financial conditions beyond the short-term rate by adjusting its balance sheet. Inflation targeting has emerged as the leading framework for monetary policy. Since the 1990s, the role of the interest rate has increased, and many countries are using inflation targeting to achieve the aims of their monetary policy. Central banks around the globe, and within the G-20, have introduced explicit inflation targets. Though a central bank cannot directly control inflation, or the factors that determine inflation, it does have the tools needed to directly affect a group of nominal variables, that in turn have an impact on the determinants of inflation. Moreover, most major central banks have adopted unconventional monetary policies to stabilize financial conditions, boost economic activity, and maintain price stability. Last but not least, financial and monetary policies have become increasingly international, involving trade-offs between domestic and foreign interests. The response to cross-border financial crises requires the close cooperation of multiple jurisdictions. The book is a key reference text for researchers, teachers and students in banking, economic policy, and government worldwide.

From Moscow, the world looks different. It is through understanding how Russia sees the world—and its place in it—that the West can best meet the Russian challenge. Russia and the West are like neighbors who never seem able to understand each other. A major reason, this book argues, is that Western leaders tend to think that Russia should act as a “rational” Western nation—even though Russian leaders for centuries have thought and acted based on their country's much different history and traditions. Russia, through Western eyes, is unpredictable and irrational, when in fact its leaders from the czars to Putin almost always act in their own very predictable and rational ways. For Western leaders to try to engage with Russia without attempting to understand how Russians look at the world is a recipe for repeated disappointment and frequent crises. Keir Giles, a senior expert on Russia at Britain's prestigious Chatham House, describes how Russian leaders have used consistent doctrinal and strategic approaches to the rest of the world. These approaches may seem deeply alien in the West, but understanding them is essential for successful engagement with Moscow. Giles argues that understanding how Moscow's leaders think—not just Vladimir Putin but his predecessors and eventual successors—will help their counterparts in the West develop a less crisis-prone and more productive relationship with Russia.

This paper empirically evaluates the operational performance of the McCallum rule, the Taylor rule and hybrid rules in India over the period 1996-2011 using quarterly data, with a view to analytically informing the conduct of monetary policy. The results show that forward-looking formulations of both rules and their hybrid version - setting a nominal output growth objective for monetary policy with an interest rate instrument - outperform contemporaneous and backward-looking specifications, especially when targeting core components of GDP and inflation, and combine the best parts of efficiency and discretion.

"As the Federal Reserve reviews its monetary policy strategy, key experts provide an in-depth discussion of the financial tools, debates, and practices that will ensure a sound US economy"--

When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What principles have guided Putin's economic policies? What patterns can be discerned? In this new analysis of Putin's Russia, Chris Miller examines its economic policy and the tools Russia's elite have used to achieve its goals. Miller argues that despite Russia's corruption, cronyism, and overdependence on oil as an economic driver, Putin's economic strategy has been surprisingly successful. Explaining the economic policies that underwrote Putin's two-decades-long rule, Miller shows how, at every juncture, Putinomics has served Putin's needs by guaranteeing economic stability and supporting his accumulation of power. Even in the face of Western financial sanctions and low oil prices, Putin has never been more relevant on the world stage.

. . . this book provides a useful overview of the challenges facing the IT policy framework, both by pointing to the limitations of the underlying theory and, more importantly, by outlining the importance of a transparent policy framework for anchoring expectations. . . the book should be of interest to all central bankers and students of monetary policy. Colin Rogers, Economic Record Recent developments in macroeconomic and monetary thinking have given a new impetus to the management of the economy. The use of monetary policy by way of manipulating the rate of interest to affect inflation is now well accepted by both academic economists and central bank practitioners. Beginning with an assessment of new thinking in macroeconomics and monetary theory, this book suggests that many countries have adopted the New Consensus Monetary Policy since the early 1990s in an attempt to reduce inflation to low levels. It goes on to illustrate that the explicit control of the money supply, which was fashionable in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK, US, Europe and elsewhere, was abandoned in favour of monetary rules that focus on interest rate manipulation by the central bank. The objective of these rules is to achieve specific, or a range of, inflation targets. Bringing together a distinguished cast of international contributors, this book presents a collection of papers, which discuss the following issues amongst others: the stability of the macroeconomic equilibrium monetary policy divergences in the Euro area stock market prices the US post- new economy bubble the information economy inflation targeting. This useful analysis of New Consensus Monetary Policy will be of great interest to financial economists and international monetary economists, as well as students and scholars of macroeconomics and finance.

This book examines the linkage between central bank structure, central bank autonomy—with respect to setting its monetary policy goals, choosing its policy mechanisms, legal independence, and financial independence—and monetary policy, both in select benchmark countries and at a broader theoretical level. Country-specific chapters on the US, UK, Germany, Greece, Russia, India, China, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa focus on the history, administrative structure, and independence of the central monetary authority in these countries. The chapters go on to explore the countries’ conduct of monetary policy, their interplay with political forces and the wider economy, their currency, and their macroeconomic outcomes. The book will appeal to researchers, students of economics, finance and business, as well as general readers with an interest in the subject.

These original contributions by some of today's leading macroeconomists and political economists explore a broad spectrum of social, political, and technological variables that encourage or impede economic growth. What political and economic factors stimulate growth and make an economy expand? These original contributions by some of today's leading macroeconomists and political economists explore a broad spectrum of social, political, and technological variables that encourage or impede economic growth. Topics range from economic reform and price flexibility to the economic effects of political coups and include both theoretical analysis and empirical results.During the past decade, economists have seen important new developments linking growth and business cycles to government policy. These contributions provide a clear understanding of these processes and their effect in shaping economic policy. They look at the welfare side of economics and offer strong economic models to explain the connection between social policies and economic growth. For example, John Londregan and Keith Poole address the economic effects of political coups, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini explore the question of whether inequality is harmful for growth, and Stephen Parente and Edward Prescott look at the role of technology adoption in stimulating growth.The essays cover a wide range of approaches. Several focus on the interaction between growth and the choice of policy, where policy reacts to economic and distributional considerations through a majority rule process. Others take the policy as given and focus on the empirical estimation of the speed of convergence of rates of growth across states and regions and the importance of externalities and knowledge spillovers for rates of growth. Essays about the business cycle fall into two broad categories. One, arising from the new political economy tradition, examines the effects of elections and price decontrols on the business cycle. The other explores the implications of optimal economic policies in a representative agent framework for the cyclical behavior of the economy.

Russia has embarked upon a difficult process of systemic transformation and economic opening up. While the initial strong GDP decline seemed to have ended in 1997, the real development was facing even more difficult problems as output declined sharply after the Ruble and banking crisis of August 1998: inflation started to increase again, exports and imports were falling, capital flight increasing and unemployment rising. There is broad disappointment in Russia regarding the transformation failure in 1998 since so many people had hoped that the end of the Soviet command economy would bring democracy, prosperity and international integration. While Poland has been able to double per capita income in the 1990s it has fallen by 50% in Russia and this despite considerable IMF involvement and some (modest) support from other international organizations. What were the reasons for transformation failure in the 1990s? What are the ingredients for long term sustainable transformation? What are the internal and international requirements to avoid a second - possibly tragic - failure of transformation in Russia? An international group of researchers has focussed on these problems during a two-year research project financed by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. A series of papers were presented at workshops in Potsdam, Bonn and Moscow in 1999 where this book is devoted to four important issues: the Russian transformation crisis, the topic of restructuring, the need for stabilizing Russia and the requirements for modernizing Russia.

The historical changes in Central and Eastern Europe demanded suitable paths for the transition from centrally planned to market based economies. The lack of relevant experience added to the challenge, giving rise to the incalculable risks of implementing untested policies. By focusing on monetary policy, trade, and convergence, this volume addresses some of the most urgent economic policy issues in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.