Podcast appearances and mentions of helene rey

Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2026.A country wants a stable exchange rate, it wants money to move freely across its borders, and it wants to set its own interest rates. It's a well-known trilemma. Central bankers must pick any two, because you cannot have all three. History, it turns out, did not read that memo.Eric Monnet has spent years reading the balance sheets that central bankers kept on each other. Since 1891 the Bank of France paid teams of multilingual economists to copy out the weekly and monthly accounts of every other central bank in the world. Those ledgers, now digitised, show that central banks have been far more than interest-rate setters. For more than a century they have quietly expanded their balance sheets to cushion their economies against shocks arriving from abroad. In this week's VoxTalk, Monnet argues we have seriously underestimated how much room to manoeuvre they have used since the 19th century.The research behind this episode:Bazot, Guillaume, Eric Monnet, and Matthias Morys. 2024. "Central Banks and the Absorption of International Shocks (1891-2019)." CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19646. (Gated.)To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Eric Monnet. 2026. "Absorbing shocks since 1891." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestEric Monnet is Professor at the Paris School of Economics and EHESS, and a Research Fellow at CEPR. An economic historian, his work spans central banking, the international monetary system, and the history of European financial systems across the 19th and 20th centuries. He previously worked as an economist at the Bank of France, and his book Controlling Credit examines monetary policy in postwar France.Research cited in this episodeThe Mundell trilemma. Formulated by Robert Mundell in the 1960s, the trilemma holds that an open economy cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy; it can have any two. Mundell received the Nobel Prize in part for the idea. The global financial cycle and the dilemma. Helene Rey argues that even a floating exchange rate does not buy full monetary autonomy, because a common global financial cycle, driven by the risk appetite of large financial institutions, moves interest rates and exchange rates across countries at once. A shock in one emerging market prompts investors to demand higher compensation across others they treat as similar. The trilemma, in this view, is really a dilemma.The Bank of France archive. The research department of the Bank of France was founded to track the financial operations of foreign central banks, collecting their weekly and monthly balance sheets from 1891 onward. The dataset assembled from these records covers 23 countries, essentially every central bank in existence by the late 1930s, and combines balance-sheet data with monthly figures on industrial production, consumer prices, and stock markets.Discount loans, open market operations, and foreign exchange interventions. The specific tools have changed completely; the behaviour has not. In the 19th century central banks intervened by discounting commercial bills and holding gold or foreign deposits; today they conduct open market operations in government bonds and hold US Treasury bills. Across all these forms, the response to an external shock, expanding domestic assets to supply liquidity, has been consistent.Taming the Global Financial Cycle. The predecessor study by the same authors: Bazot, Monnet, and Morys, "Taming the Global Financial Cycle: Central Banks as Shock Absorbers in the First Era of Globalization," Journal of Economic History 82(3), 2022, which established the pattern for the classical gold standard period.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThe Bank of England's Capital Mistake. Former Bank insiders David Aikman and John Vickers argue that cutting equity capital requirements for UK banks could raise the odds of a financial crisis, a companion piece on what central bank balance sheets are for.Related reading on VoxEU.orgCentral banks and the absorption of international shocks, the authors' own VoxEU column setting out the dataset and the two main findings in brief.

Ethan Ilzetzki is an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics and a research fellow with the Center for Economic Policy Research. Ethan is also a returning guest to the show, and he rejoins David on Macro Musings to talk about the international implications of Fed Policy and the strong dollars as well as Ethan's thoughts on business cycle theory in light of the recent inflation surge. David and Ethan also discuss Ethan's takeaways from the UK crisis, how to evaluate and contextualize monetary policy shocks, the contemporary applications of the fiscal theory of the price level, and more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here.   Check out our new Macro Musings merch here, and use the promo code NGDP for 10% off!   Ethan's Twitter: @ilzetzki Ethan's website Ethan's LSE profile   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth Follow us on Twitter: @Macro_Musings Click here for the latest Macro Musings episodes sent straight to your inbox!   Related Links:   *UK Financial Crisis of 2022: Retrospective Diagnosis and Policy Recommendations* by Ethan Ilzetzki   *Exchange Arrangements Entering the Twenty-First Century: Which Anchor Will Hold?* by Ethan Ilzetzki, Carmen Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff   *Inflation as a Fiscal Limit* by Francesco Bianchi and Leonardo Melosi   *The Global Financial Cycle* by Helene Rey and Silvia Miranda-Agrippino

Bill Nelson is the chief economist and executive vice president at the Bank Policy Institute. He previously worked as a deputy director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board, where his responsibilities included monetary policy analysis, discount window policy analysis, and financial institution supervision. Bill has also worked closely with the BIS working groups on the design of liquidity regulations and is a returning guest of the podcast. He rejoins David on Macro Musings to talk about his new note that is titled, *Bank Examiner Preferences are Obstructing Monetary Policy*. David and Bill also discuss how the Fed's forward guidance is affecting recent market turmoil, how to change the mindset of bank examiners and the public, why the Fed should look into establishing a committed liquidity facility, and more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here.   Bill's BPI profile BPI's Twitter: @bankpolicy   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth Follow us on Twitter: @Macro_Musings Click here for the latest Macro Musings episodes sent straight to your inbox   Related Links:   *Bank Examiner Preferences are Obstructing Monetary Policy* by Bill Nelson   *Quantifying the Costs and Benefits of Quantitative Easing* by Andrew Levin, Brian Lu, and Bill Nelson   FRED Graph: *Liabilities and Capital: Liabilities: Earnings Remittances Due to the U.S. Treasury: Wednesday Level*   *The Global Financial Cycle* by Silvia Miranda-Agrippino and Helene Rey

Michael Dooley is a chief economist for Figure Technologies and a 20-year veteran of the Federal Reserve System and the IMF. Michael is also a professor emeritus in the department of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he joins Macro Musings to talk about the international monetary system and the future of the dollar. Specifically, David and Michael also discuss the original and revised Bretton Woods systems, the Fed's role as a monetary superpower, and what this means for the US as a provider of safe and unsafe assets.   Transcript for the episode can be found here.   Michael's UC Santa Cruz profile Michael's NBER archive   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth Follow us on Twitter: @Macro_Musings Click here for the latest Macro Musings episodes sent straight to your inbox!   Related Links:   *US Sanctions Reinforce the Dollar's Dominance* by Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau, and Peter Garber   *Exchange Arrangements Entering the 21st Century: Which Anchor Will Hold?* by Ethan Ilzetzki, Carmen Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff   *Dilemma Not Trilemma: The Global Financial Cycle and Monetary Policy Independence* by Helene Rey   *The Global Financial Cycle* by Helene Rey and Silvia Miranda-Agrippino

Eurozone economies are expanding but is it really time to celebrate? Professors Lucrezia Reichlin and Helene Rey warn of dangers ahead

What do we mean by 'emerging markets'? Helene Rey, Antonio Qintella, Stephen Olabisi Onasanya, HE Amr Abdullah Al-Dabbagh and Laura D'Andrea Tyson seek to define this term and further explore these markets as an economic phenomenon. The Global Leadership Summit is the London Business School's flagship event for its global community. http://www.london.edu

What do we mean by 'emerging markets'? Helene Rey, Antonio Qintella, Stephen Olabisi Onasanya, HE Amr Abdullah Al-Dabbagh and Laura D'Andrea Tyson seek to define this term and further explore these markets as an economic phenomenon. The Global Leadership Summit is the London Business School's flagship event for its global community. http://www.london.edu

What do we mean by 'emerging markets'? Helene Rey, Antonio Qintella, Stephen Olabisi Onasanya, HE Amr Abdullah Al-Dabbagh and Laura D'Andrea Tyson seek to define this term and further explore these markets as an economic phenomenon

Helene Rey, Professor of Economics, argues that the policy responses we have seen since the start of the current crisis are so big that they will shape the global business environment for the next five to ten years

Helene Rey, London Business School Chaired Professor of Economics, looks at the drop in international transactions and examines whether international trade flows and international financial flows point towards a collapse of globalisation

Helene Rey, Professor of Economics, examines the US current account deficit.