This volume collects the
proceedings from a conference on the evolution and practice of central banking sponsored
by the Central Bank Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The articles and
discussants' comments in this volume largely focus on two questions: the need for central
banks, and how to maintain price stability once they are established. The questions
addressed include whether large banks (or coalitions of small banks) can substitute for
government regulation and due central bank liquidity provision; whether the future will
have fewer central banks or more; the possibility of private means to deliver a uniform
currency; if competition across sovereign currencies can ensure global price stability;
the role of learning (and unlearning) the lessons of the past inflationary episodes in
understanding central bank behavior; and an analysis of the most recent experiment in
central banking, the European Central Bank.
Contributors
Jasmina Arifovic, Thomas J.
Sargent, James Bullard, Christopher A. Sims, Charles Goodhart, Donald L. Kohn, Mark
Gertler, Jürgen von Hagen, Matthias Brückner, Stephen G. Cecchetti, Vitor Gaspar,
Alberto Trejos, Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, Ross Levine, Gary Gorton, Lixin Huang, John H. Boyd,
Edward J. Green, Arthur J. Rolnick, Bruce D. Smith, Warren E. Weber, Neil Wallace, Bruce
Champ, Randall S. Kroszner, Jeremy C. Stein, Jeffrey M. Lacker
Contents
Introduction
Part I. Operational Issues
in Modern Central Banking: 1. Laboratory experiments with an exceptional Phillips curve
2. Whither central banking?
Part II. Monetary Union: 3.
Monetary policy in unknown territory: the European Central Bank in the early years
4. International currencies
and dollarization
Part III. Private
Alternatives to Central Banks: 5. Banking panics and the origin of central banking
6. Establishing a monetary
union in the United States
7. Currency competition in
the digital age
321 pages