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Article: German monetary history in the first half of the twentieth century.(Statistical Data Included)
- Article from:
- Economic Quarterly
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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At the end of 1998, the German Bundesbank turned over the administration of monetary policy to the European Central Bank (ECB). In the years between World War I and 1998, the Bundesbank had come to embody the modern central bank. What history did Germany traverse to make possible the creation of such an institution? And how does that history help us define a modern central bank?
Today, a central bank chooses one of two objectives. It may target either the exchange rate or domestic economic conditions, including the inflation rate. In either case, the central bank is the unique institution charged with controlling the chosen objective. Such control relies ...