Central banking in the Americas: Lessons from two decades

This volume discusses the major developments of the last two decades and how they might affect the future. It presents a collection of chapters – one from each country represented on the BIS Consultative Council of the Americas (CCA). These contributions review the experience of the past 20 years to draw lessons that would help central banks to meet the challenges of the future. We complement this collection with two additional chapters. Alejandro Werner, founder of the Georgetown Americas Institute, Professor of Practice at Georgetown University and former Director of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department, writes about the institutional successes of central banking in Latin America in the past 20 years, and the significant challenges in the next decade. Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the IMF and a former official of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, discusses how a cross-border payments, exchange and contracting platform could drive economic integration and growth. Taken together, the papers give an excellent overview of what happened in central banking in the Americas since the turn of the millennium and how central banks look at the challenges ahead.