International Money and Banking

This is the class website for University College Dublin module International Money and Banking (ECON30150) which was taught by Professor Karl Whelan in Spring 2020.

 

Lecture Notes

0. Introduction

1. Money as a Medium of Exchange and Some History

2. Banks and Financial Intermediation

3. Liquidity and Solvency

4. Central Banks

5. The Money Supply and Monetarism

6. Problems with Monetarism

7. The Fed and the ECB

8. Central Banks and Interest Rates

9. Banking Crises

10. Banking Regulation

11. Long-Term Interest Rates

12. Default Risk and Collateral

13. Quantitative Easing

14. The Phillips Curve: Evidence and Implications

15. Real Interest Rates and the Taylor Rule

16. Exchange Rate Regimes and the Euro

17. The Euro Crisis and Developments Since

 

Source Material and Readings

A Comparative Chronology of Money. Website based on A History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day by Glyn Davies.

Jevons on Barter

Milton Friedman: The Island of Stone Money

R. A. Radford:  The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp

Charles Goodhart: Two Concepts of Money

A History of Money: From AD 800 by John F. Chown. Google Books version. Chapter 5 is “The Great Debasement of Henry VIII’s Reign”

Karl Whelan: How Is Bitcoin Different From The Dollar?

Karl Whelan: So What’s So Special About Bitcoin?

Bank of Ireland 2018 Annual Report

Cleveland Fed: Bank Capital Requirements: A Conversation with the Experts

Patrick Honohan’s Report: The Irish Banking Crisis Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003-2008.

Bank of England: Understanding the fair value of banks’ loans

Bad Journalism on Bank Capital Example One: London Review of Books

Bad Journalism on Bank Capital Example Two: Fortune

Bad Journalism on Bank Capital Example Three: Article on Reserve Bank of New Zealand 

Federal Reserve: Recent Balance Sheet Trends

The weekly consolidated balance sheet of the Eurosystem from the ECB.

Karl Whelan:  Is the ECB Risking Insolvency? Does it Matter?

Karl Whelan: Should Monetary Policy be Separated From Banking Supervision?

Information on Payments Systems: TARGET2 and Fedwire.

ECB: The demand for currency in the euro area and the impact of the euro cash changeover

Paul De Grauwe and Magdalena Polan: Is Inflation Always and Everywhere a Monetary Phenomenon?

Steve H. Hanke and Nicholas Krus: World Hyperinflations

Top Five Hyperinflations

AFP: Venezuela releases new banknotes in cash crisis

New York Times: Venezuala Issues New Banknotes Because of Hyperinflation

Todd Keister and James McAndrews Why Are Banks Holding So Many Excess Reserves?

ECB Protocol (i.e. the legal statute underlying the ECB and Eurosystem).

ECB Press Conferences: Transcripts and Video

ECB monetary policy meeting accounts

ECB: Banking Supervision

San Francisco Fed: Information on the Fed’s role in banking supervision.

FOMC Statements, Minutes, and Transcripts

Joseph Gagnon and Brian Sack: Monetary Policy with Abundant Liquidity: A New Operating Framework for the Federal Reserve

New York Fed (2019). Stressed Outflows and the Supply of Central Bank Reserves

Steve Cechetti and Kermit Schoenholz (2019). The Brave New World of Monetary Policy Operations

Karl Whelan: The Secret Tool Draghi Uses to Run Europe

The ECB’s ELA Procedures

Vítor Constâncio (2018). Past and future of the ECB monetary policy

Karl Whelan (2019): Recommendations for the ECB’s Monetary Policy Strategy Review

Philip Lane (2019). Monetary Policy and Below-Target Inflation

Ben Bernanke: Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression (American Economic Review, June 1983. Not available outside UCD. Go through UCD Connect and the Library Page.)

Hyun Song Shin: Reflections on Northern Rock: The Bank Run that Heralded the Global Financial Crisis

Karl Whelan: Banking Union and the ECB as Lender of Last Resort

Press Release: A single rulebook for the resolution of failing banks

Bloomberg: Italy Commits $19 Billion for Veneto Banks in Biggest Rescue

Bloomberg: Testing Europe’s Resolve on Failing Banks

Piergiorgio Alessandri and Andrew Haldane (Bank of England): Banking on the State

Douglas Diamond and Raghuram Rajan: The Credit Crisis: Conjectures about Causes and Remedies

Documentation for the Basle 2 Internal Ratings Based model.

Philipp Hildebrand: Is Basel II Enough? The Benefits of a Leverage Ratio

New York Times: Risk Mismangement

Patrick Honohan: Bank Failures: The Limits of Risk Modelling

Andrew Haldane and Vasileios Madouros. The Dog and the Frisbee.

Dan Davies. Facts and Myths About Bank Leverage Ratios

Andrew Crockett: Marrying the Micro- and Macro-Prudential Dimensions of Financial Stability

Samuel Hanson, Anil Kashyap and Jeremy Stein: A Macroprudential Approach to Financial Regulation

Basle 3 Agreement

Andrew Haldane: The Bank and the banks.

Financial Stability Board press release on TLAC.

Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: High-level summary of Basel III reforms

McKinsey: Basel “IV”: What’s next for banks?

Selected Interest Rates from the Federal Reserve.

NTMA Bond report website.

Spreadsheet with bond yield examples

ECB Euro Area Yield Curve

Historical yield curve data from the Federal Reserve

FOMC Statements.

Ben Bernanke: Why are interest rates so low, part 4: Term premiums

Chicago Fed: Why Does the Yield-Curve Slope Predict Recessions?

San Francisco Fed: Information in the Yield Curve about Future Recessions

Ben Bernanke: The Financial Accelerator and the Credit Channel

Karl Whelan: How Does QE Work? A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

Joseph Gagnon, Matthew Raskin, Julie Remache, Brian Sack: Large-Scale Asset Purchases by the Federal Reserve: Did They Work?

Stefania D’Amico and Thomas B. King: Flow and Stock Effects of Large-Scale Treasury Purchases

Milton Friedman: The Role of Monetary Policy.

Ben Bernanke: The Benefits of Price Stability

Olivier Blanchard (2016). The US Phillips Curve: Back to the 60s?

Ben Bernanke: The zero lower bound on interest rates: How should the Fed respond?

Olivier Blanchard, Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, and Paolo Mauro: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy

Brad DeLong: Central Bank Credibility and Consistency: The Analytics

John Taylor: Discretion Versus Policy Rules in Practice

Glenn Rudebusch: The Fed’s Monetary Policy Response to the Current Crisis

Karl Whelan (2013): Sovereign Default and the Euro

Karl Whelan (2019): The Euro at 20: Successes, Problems, Progress and Threats

Stephen Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz (2018). Sudden stops: A primer on balance-of-payments crises.

CEPR (2015): Rebooting the Eurozone: Step 1 – Agreeing a Crisis narrative

Bénassy-Quéré et al (2018), Reconciling risk sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to euro area reform

Barry Eichengreen (2007). The Breakup of the Euro Area

Phoebus Athanassiou (2009). Withdrawal and Expulsion from the EU and EMU, ECB Legal Working Paper.