Central banking through the centuries
Ivo Maes ()
Additional contact information
Ivo Maes: National Bank of Belgium and Robert Triffin Chair, Université catholique de Louvain and ICHEC Brussels Management School
No 345, Working Paper Research from National Bank of Belgium
Abstract:
Anniversaries are occasions for remembrance and reflections on one’s history. Many central banks take the occasion of an anniversary to publish books on their history. In this essay we discuss five recent books on the history of central banking and monetary policy. In these volumes, the Great Financial Crisis and the way which it obliged central banks to reinvent themselves occupies an important place. Although this was certainly not the first time in the history of central banking, the magnitude of the modern episode is remarkable. As comes clearly to the fore in these volumes, there is now, also in the historiography of central banking, much more attention to the (shifting) balance between price stability and financial stability. The history of central banking is more perceived as one of an institution whose predominant concern varied between “normal” times and “extraordinary” times. So, central banks will have to remain vigilant, as one should expect financial crises to return. Moreover, the new world of central banking, with a greater responsibility of central banks for financial stability, will make life more complicated for central banks. It may have also consequences for central bank independence, as the modalities of the two mandates, price and financial stability, are not the same. Another aspect which comes to the fore in these volumes is the relationship between central banking and state formation. Historically, central banks have been embedded in processes of nation-building. By extending their network of branches across the country, or by being at a center of a system of liquidity provision, ultimately tied to the national currency, they played a key role in the shaping of “national economies”.
Keywords: central banking; financial stability; price stability; Great Financial Crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 E58 G28 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/wp/wp345en.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201810-345
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Paper Research from National Bank of Belgium Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().