The paper responds to a request made by the Executive Board at the time of the 2017 Review of the Standards and Codes Initiative (RSCI) for a revision and update of the 1999 Monetary and Financial Policies Transparency Code (MFPT). Directors asked staff that the new code remove the overlap on financial policies covered by other standards, expand the transparency standards to broader set of activities undertaken by many central banks since the Global Financial Crisis, and reorient the transparency standards to facilitate risk-based assessments to support policy effectiveness and address macroeconomic risks.

Transparency in government operations is widely regarded as an important precondition for macroeconomic fiscal sustainability, good governance, and overall fiscal rectitude. Notably, the Interim Committee, at its April and September 1996 meetings, stressed the need for greater fiscal transparency. Prompted by these concerns, this paper represents a first attempt to address many of the aspects of transparency in government operations. It provides an overview of major issues in fiscal transparency and examines the IMF's role in promoting transparency in government operations.

The paper reports to the Executive Board on its decision of April 29, 2019, to prepare an IMF Central Bank Transparency Code (CBT), which is linked to the 2017 Review of the Standards and Codes Initiative (RSCI), for a revision and update of the 1999 Monetary and Financial Policies Transparency Code (MFPT). Directors asked that the CBT should remove the overlap on financial policies covered by other international standards, expand the transparency standards to broader set of activities undertaken by many central banks since the 2008 financial crisis, and reorient the transparency standards to facilitate risk-based assessments to support policy effectiveness and address macroeconomic risks.

Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

This paper develops a new central bank transparency index for inflation-targeting central banks (CBT-IT index). It applies the CBT-IT index to the Czech National Bank (CNB), one of the most transparent inflation-targeting central banks. The CNB has invested heavily in developing a Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS) to implement a full-fledged inflation-forecast-targeting (IFT) regime. The components of CBT-IT index include measures of transparency about monetary policy objectives, the FPAS designed to support IFT, and the monetary policymaking process. For the CNB, all three components have shown substantial improvements over time but a few gaps remain. The CNB is currently working on eliminating some of these gaps.

Provides an authoritative account and explanation of the revised IMF Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency (the Code), used by countries undertaking assessments of the transparency of their fiscal management practices (including so-called fiscal ROSCs), legislatures, civil society organizations, economists, and financial analysts. Supplemented by the revised Guide on Resource Revenue Transparency, it identifies numerous benefits from fiscal transparency, including providing citizens with information to hold governments accountable for their policy choices, informing and improving the quality of economic policy decisions, highlighting potential risks to the fiscal outlook, and easing a country's access to international capital markets.--Publisher's description.

The economic influence of central banks has received ever more attention given their centrality during the financial crises that led to the Great Recession, strains in the European Union, and the challenges to the Euro. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Central Banking reflects the state of the art in the theory and practice and covers a wide range of topics that will provide insight to students, scholars, and practitioners. As an up to date reference of the current and potential challenges faced by central banks in the conduct of monetary policy and in the search for the maintenance of financial system stability, this Oxford Handbook covers a wide range of essential issues. The first section provides insights into central bank governance, the differing degrees of central bank independence, and the internal dynamics of their decision making. The next section focuses on questions of whether central banks can ameliorate fiscal burdens, various strategies to affect monetary policy, and how the global financial crisis affected the relationship between the traditional focus on inflation targeting and unconventional policy instruments such as quantitative easing (QE), foreign exchange market interventions, negative interest rates, and forward guidance. The next two sections turn to central bank communications and management of expectations and then mechanisms of policy transmission. The fifth part explores the challenges of recent developments in the economy and debates about the roles central banks should play, focusing on micro- and macro-prudential arguments. The implications of recent developments for policy modeling are covered in the last section. The breadth and depth enhances understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing central banks.