Central Banking, Climate Change and Green Finance

Responsibility for financial and macroeconomic stability implicitly or explicitly lies with the central bank, which therefore ought to address climate-related and other environmental risks on a systemic level. Furthermore, central banks, through their regulatory oversight over money, credit, and the financial system, are in a powerful position to support the development of green finance models and enforce an adequate pricing of environmental and carbon risk by financial institutions. The central topic of this paperare the public financial governance policies through which central banks, as well as other relevant financial regulatory agencies, can address environmental risk and promote sustainable finance. The paperfirst discusses the reasons why central banks should be concerned with aligning finance with sustainable development. Second, the paperreviews the tools and instruments that can be utilized by central banks and financial regulatory agencies to address environmental risk and promote green finance and sustainable development. Third, the paperprovides a brief review of green public financial governance initiatives

DISTINGUISHED LECTURE ON ECONOMICS IN GOVERNMENT - CENTRAL BANKING AND SYSTEMIC RISKS IN CAPITAL-MARKETS

Bagehot's conception of the last resort lending function of the central bank is shared by most economists today. On several occasions, the Federal Reserve has digressed from its overall strategy of monetary control to also undertake a tactical rescue of individual banks and segments of the capital market. On three other occasions, the Federal Reserve has intervened to counter systemic risks to the financial system beyond the arena of commercial banks. The events which prompted these actions were the threat to the commercial paper market triggered by the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad in June 1970, the pressures on broker-dealer firms generated by the collapse of speculation in silver in early 1980, and the near failure of the clearing and settlement systems operated by stock and commodity exchanges which occurred during the stock market crash of 1987. I was a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System during the Penn Central episode, and I shared in the decisions to intervene. As a Public Governor of the Commodity Exchange, I helped to formulate the policies applied during the silver speculation and in the aftermath of the stock market collapse. The discussion which follows draws on those experiences. </jats:p

Inflation Targeting, Policy Rates and Exchange Rate Volatility: Evidence from Turkey

In January 2002, the Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) moved to an implicit inflation targeting framework, which included core attributes of an inflation targeting (IT) regime including, among other requirements, the announcement of a formal target for inflation. As a result of successful disinflation, prudent fiscal policy and implementation of reforms, Turkey introduced a full-fledged IT regime in 2006, which brought further transparency to the monetary policy framework. We found that during 2002–2006, among other factors, the developments in Turkey's risk premium played a very significant role in the path of policy rates. We arrived at this conclusion by estimating a Taylor rule describing the policy reaction function of the CBT. During this period exchange rate pass-through to inflation declined, and while capital inflows strengthened the real exchange rate, the nominal exchange rate and the financial markets in general were affected by occasional reversal of capital inflows. We offer a short discussion of CBT reaction to sudden stop episodes under the new monetary regime. Particularly, we ask whether the sharp increase in policy rates in response to the mid-2006 episode was a defense of the currency instead of adherence to an open economy IT regime. We also discuss whether softening of the targeted disinflation path may have been a viable option. Comparative Economic Studies (2008) 50, 460–493. doi:10.1057/ces.2008.23