Ending Inflation in the People's Republic of China: From Chairman Mao to the 21st Century

In the post-1978 reform period the People’s Republic of China experienced its most serious open inflationary problems since 1949-1950. This paper compares the 1949-1950 case to more recent Chinese attempts at inflation control and considers the role played by budget deficits, indexation and direct intervention in commodity markets. While inflationary problems subsided by the mid-1990s, continuing deficit-spending pressures and weaknesses in China’s banking system still pose a very real danger. The financial reforms undertaken in the late 1990s include initiatives directed at the bad debts accumulated in China’s banks by loss-making state enterprises.

Interaction between central bank behavior and fiscal policymaking: the case of the U.S

Monetary policy - United States ; Fiscal policy

Cross-country evidence on the relationship between central banks and governments

Banks and banking, Central ; Fiscal policy ; Monetary policy

Swiss monetary policy: central bank independence and stabilization goals

Banks and banking, Central - Switzerland ; Monetary policy - Switzerland ; Switzerland

Inflation is Always and Everywhere a Monetary Phenomenon: Richmond vs. Houston in 1864

On April 1, 1864 the Confederate Currency Reform Act reduced the money supply in the Eastern Confederacy by one third. The delayed implementation of the reform west of the Mississippi provides a counterfactual view of what may have happened in the east had the reform not been enacted. This episode is a natural experiment illustrating the relative importance for prices of war news vs. the quantity of money in circulation. Our analysis of the major eastern and western gold markets, Richmond and Houston, strongly suggests that money matters more than war news in the post-reform period.Confederacy, currency reform, quantity theory

Fiscal policymaking and the central bank institutional constraint

Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central ; Fiscal policy

Suppressing Asset Price Inflation: The Confederate Experience, 1861-1865

Confederate monetary reforms encouraged holders of Treasury notes to exchange these notes for bonds by imposing deadlines on their convertibility. We show that Confederate funding acts aimed at precipitating the conversion of currency into bonds did temporarily suppress currency depreciation. These acts also triggered upsurges in commodity prices, however, as note holders rushed to spend the currency before their exchange rights were reduced. Asset price stabilization policies seem to have increased the velocity of circulation and counterproductively channeled inflationary pressures into other areas of the economy.

The Option Value of Confederate Currency and Inflation Control, 1861-1865

Confederate Treasury notes were convertible into government bonds at par. This provided an imbedded option value for the currency. Confederate interest-rate policy encouraged, and ultimately coerced, holders of Treasury notes to exchange these notes for bonds by imposing deadlines on their convertibility. In this paper we identify a long-run equilibrium relationship between the gold value of the bonds and the gold value of Confederate currency. We also show that the three funding acts aimed at precipitating the conversion of currency into bonds were effective in temporarily dampening inflationary pressures.Confederacy; bonds; interest-rate pegging

Extending Mission Operations Safty Audits (MOSA) Research to an Indian Sub Continent Island Airline

The aim of the Mission Operations Safety Audit (MOSA) research is to validate behavioural self-reported data from professional pilots, so that management can have confidence in this safety-critical debriefing information, and feed it back into the training continuum. In doing so, a safety loop can be established in a cost effective, operationally specific and timely program of data collection. The first study was conducted in a military F/A-18 Hornet simulator. Pilots were asked to self-report on their own operational performance across a predetermined selection of behavioural categories designed in conjunction with subject matter experts. To further test the MOSA methodology, this time in-flight, a second study was carried out with the cooperation of a civil airline in Europe. Both the military and the civil airline studies found that professional pilots were able to effectively self-report on their own performance. However, the multi-crewed European airline pilots’ results revealed that first officers were more critical of their own performance. In order to determine whether national or organisational culture influenced these results, the MOSA methodology was recently tested in a regional airline operating Dash 8 aircraft between island destinations in the Indian Ocean. The results indicated that neither national culture nor aircraft operating culture appear to influence the accuracy of pilot self reports. However, the self reports from first officers do appear to be linked to their seniority and experience in that role