Productivity
ECB calls for changes to draft Austrian central bank law
Mechanism for paying productivity council’s head would be monetary financing, ECB says
UK looks to boost long-term investing
Working group says action needed to encourage illiquid investing without risking instability
Strategies for change: central banks’ quest for diversity
Dedicated diversity strategies remain uncommon among central banks, despite growing recognition of the need for better minority representation
Demand shocks can have permanent impact on US economy – Fed paper
Authors find hysteresis is an important driver of longer-term growth trend in US
The ‘golden age’ of central banking has passed
Central banks face multi-faceted challenges and weakened autonomy amid highly polarised inflation expectations
Spanish governor favours green monetary policy
Hernández de Cos stresses ECB should account for climate risks in its price stability mandate
A return of the inflation monster?
There are fears that a shift in intellectual approach towards running economies ‘hot’ could herald a return of the money-eating inflation era
Central banks take less than 50 minutes to fix critical outages
Time tolerances for critical system downtime range from one to 32 hours
Lifetime achievement: Charles Goodhart
The LSE and BoE veteran economist has his own ‘law’, and played a key role in the establishment of monetary policy in the UK, Hong Kong’s peg and the ‘New Zealand model’, which influenced a generation of central bankers
The Covid crisis, central banks and the future
Crisis responses have had positive initial outcomes, but also exacerbated significant underlying challenges that raise concerns related to exit strategies and the future for central banks
European central bankers see room for fiscal-monetary co-operation
Pandemic showed it was “critical” for both policies to work together, say central bank governors
NBER paper seeks lessons for home working in Industrial Revolution
Move to remote working could be undermined by organisational problems, authors warn
Covid-19 likely harms productivity – BoE paper
Private sector could lose 5% of its productivity in Q4 this year, authors estimate
Whither the age of ‘magic money’?
EME central banks are more exposed to changes in geopolitics, climate, demography, technology and inflation at a time when monetary theory is running well behind central bank practice
Haldane explores long-term consequences of home working
Welfare impact seems broadly positive, but it is uneven and may not last, says BoE chief economist
BoE officials fear long-term ‘scarring’ as uncertainty hits record high
MPC members broadly gloomy on the outlook, but there is “huge” uncertainty, says Andrew Bailey
BIS paper studies lifecycle of zombie companies
Number of zombie firms has risen substantially, and their future prospects are not good, authors say
James Bullard on the Fed’s policy review, FSOC and forecasting jobs data
St Louis Fed president discusses his support for average inflation targeting, his concerns about US Treasuries market function, non-bank regulatory weakness and negative rates, as well as the unexpected success in using Homebase data to predict highly…
BoE partners with QA Media to benchmark software investments
Central bank aims to improve own software development processes, and those in the banking sector
Should the BoE go negative?
Much research into negative rates suggests central banks should have little to fear, but there are plenty of caveats
Campos Neto on reforming Brazil’s economy amid Covid-19 distress
The Central Bank of Brazil governor speaks about how Brazil is managing fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, the benefit of large reserves, his plans to deploy emergency asset purchases and why he favours extending the IMF’s SDR funding
The ECB, the lockdown and the monetary financing lock
The eurozone’s central bank may need to break its prohibition on monetary financing to fight the pandemic
Fed set to adopt ‘elements’ of price-level targeting
Covid-19 could act as a catalyst for a Janet Yellen-supported Fed move to adopt elements of price-level targeting. But questions remain about the timing of such a move
Can growth in developing Asia be made more sustainable?
The structure of the global economy will be reshaped by Covid-19, and what happens in Asia will be crucial, writes Philip Turner