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Articles by Patrick Honohan
Book notes: The unanchored central banker, by Manoj Pradhan and Charles Goodhart
Manoj Pradhan and Charles Goodhart,The unanchored central banker, published by the authors, 2026, 288 pages With its message that interest rates and inflation would rise appreciably in the coming years, Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan’s (G&P) previous monograph The great demographic reversal startled the central banking world when it was published six years ago. It generated a considerable controversy. With over 500 citations to date on Google Scholar, it is one of the most widely cited
Central banking for open economies in a changed world
The Peterson Institute for International Economics holds a high-level discussion with central bank governors addressing some of the most pressing issues in open-economy monetary policy. The conversation focuses on the implications of profound changes in the international financial and geopolitical environment.
Inflation surge: Patrick Honohan on Ireland, Europe and the Atlantic divide - The Currency
How was the post-pandemic inflation for you? Not too good, I suspect, especially if you are a heavy user of energy, or if food is a big part of your spending, for example, or if your savings were in long-term bonds or in bank deposits. There was considerable variation in the degree to which the big surge in inflation between 2021 and 2023 impacted Irish households.
The worst inflation outbreak in 40 years: Distilling lessons from the COVID era
During the recovery from COVID-19, inflation in the United States and many other countries surged to its highest level in more than 40 years, inflicting enormous pain on households and businesses, upending fundamental patterns of economic activity, and changing the course of politics and societies worldwide.
How much capital do central banks really have?
Twenty or more of the world’s most significant central banks have seen their equity position (or capital and reserves) go negative in the last few years. This novel situation does not fundamentally challenge the ability of these institutions to deliver on their mandate, but it does raise some interesting policy and communications issues. Central banks are incurring losses for two main reasons. The first is the impact of rising interest rates on their maturity mismatched portfolios.
How much money have central banks really lost?
Central banks experienced widespread financial losses over the last three years. The problem has been most severe at banks whose balance sheets were bloated in the years of low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE). As far as the scale of the problem is concerned, however, first impressions can be misleading because central banks account for various assets and liabilities differently in reporting their net worth.
The Central Bank as Crisis Manager
Honohan, an academic and former governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, provides a road map for central bankers to navigate financial crises. Central banks should start by monitoring the structure and operation of financial markets to anticipate risks and recognize crises as they unfold. They should prepare various responses and plan for different scenarios, no mean task given the difficulty of predicting the form of the next crisis.
Central banks need to step up their crisis management plans
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Book launch: The Central Bank as Crisis Manager
The Central Bank as Crisis Manager focuses on how the world's central banks have confronted crisis after crisis in recent years—both before and since the global financial crisis. Yet many of these events seem to take central banks by surprise.
Lessons from the Basel Committee's assessments of individual jurisdictions
In the early 2010s, under the leadership of its then chair Stefan Ingves, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision initiated a program of assessment of the consistency of individual jurisdictions' prudential regulation with its own standards. This session of Financial Statements focuses on the experience of this program, which has been innovative for a global financial standard-setter, and on the outlook for its future iterations.
How did Ireland recover so strongly from the global financial crisis?
Thirteen years ago, the Irish economy was on the rocks. Unemployment had soared from below 5% in 2007 to almost 16% by 2011. At the same time, net emigration was running at about 0.6% of the population per annum and the Irish government’s debt had quadrupled to reach 135% of gross national product (GNP).
The inflation surge in Europe
For most of the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, undershooting rather than overshooting had been the main inflation problem of the European Central Bank (ECB). During 2020, consumer prices in the euro area were falling; by the end of that year, average inflation since the introduction of the euro two decades earlier stood at only 1.6 percent per year. Things began to snowball in 2021. The 12-month inflation rate steadily accelerated.
Ben Bernanke's review of the Bank of England might protect it from political influence
Central banks are under more political scrutiny now than at any time in the past half century. Many observers worry that their independence—which is vital if monetary policy decisions are to be made with sufficient attention to the long term and central banks are to be able to restore and maintain price stability—could be a casualty of the growing political dissatisfaction with the scale and persistence of inflation.
Europe and the Transformation of the Irish Economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: Summary Having stagnated for decades in the shadow of the UK, the Irish economy's performance improved after it joined the European Union (EEC) in 1973. This Element shows how the challenge of EU membership gave focus and direction to Irish economic policy. No longer dependent on low value-added agricultural exports to Britain, within the EU Ireland became a hub for multinational corporations in IT and pharmaceutical products.
The best books about big financial scams
Home France books Patrick's list Who am I? There’s something clinical and yet human about big financial crises, especially those that involve some kind of trickery or fraud. I’ve always been fascinated by this dark side of the world of money, and have been fortunate enough in my career to have had ring-side seats at a few such events in rich and poor countries.
The IMF on the future of interest rates and managing high public debt
Event Summary Public debt as a ratio to GDP soared across the world during the COVID-19 pandemic and is expected to remain elevated, posing a growing challenge for policymakers, especially in an environment of rising real interest rates. Whether real interest rates will remain elevated in the long run or converge back to pre-pandemic levels will have crucial implications for debt sustainability. But what will drive long-term real interest rates?
Central banks are incurring losses, but critics' concerns are overblown
First came the surge in inflation, which central banks did not foresee or prevent. Now as interest rates rise, many central banks around the world are reporting heavy financial losses on the financial assets they acquired over the previous decade—a further reputational blow because central banks have tended to make profits year in and year out. The biggest hit has been to the Swiss National Bank (SNB), which lost the equivalent of $143 billion in 2022.
Russia's ruble actions are monetary theater of the absurd
It would be a stretch to say that the ruble has been turned into rubble, but the sanctioning of the Bank of Russia by the United States, European Union, and other major economic powers has jolted the Russian monetary system, forcing monetary authorities to revert to a command-and-control approach largely abandoned in the 1990s.
Central banks' uneasy embrace of digital currencies
The author thanks Martin Chorzempa, Joe Gagnon, Ángel Ubide, and Steve Weisman for helpful comments. Move over bitcoin, the big players are here. Volatile and energy intensive, this faddish digital asset was never going to make it as fully-fledged money. Meanwhile, banks and financial technology companies have been gradually bringing their more practical payments services into the digital age.
Using purchasing power parities to compare countries: Strengths and shortcomings
December 2020 Photo Credit: REUTERS/Wong Campion Good international economic policy requires good comparative data on national economic performance. In May 2020, the World Bank published the latest comprehensive update of purchasing power parities (PPPs), as part of the International Comparison Program.
Lebanon's monetary meltdown tests the limits of central banking
September 2020 Photo Credit: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir Lebanon has spent the last 20 years juggling an excessive level of debt and current account deficits. Apparent financial wizardry by the central bank (Banque du Liban) helped keep the exchange rate fixed, inflation low, and debt service flowing until 2020. But these efforts merely postponed the inevitable, at a high cost.
Pandemic loans to firms: Postponing the evil day?
Governments around the world are providing financial support to firms hit by the pandemic shutdowns, with the aim of limiting job losses and preventing closure of fundamentally viable businesses. But the financial instruments they are using for much of this support are likely to leave beneficiary firms overindebted when the pandemic crisis has passed. Governments should, therefore, consider alternatives.
Should Monetary Policy Take Inequality and Climate Change into Account?
October 2019 Photo Credit: REUTERS/Henry Nicholls Should central banks take more account of ethical issues, notably the impact of monetary policy actions on the distribution of income and wealth and on efforts to combat climate change, in the design and implementation of the wider monetary policy toolkit they have been using in the past decade?
A Monetary Policy Tilt for Inequality and Climate Change?
A growing number of economists and advocates are calling on the US Federal Reserve and other central banks to take more account of social and environmental concerns in the design and implementation of monetary policy. The motivation of these critics is obvious amid rising anxiety over global warming and economic inequality in advanced countries.
Real and Imagined Constraints on Euro Area Monetary Policy
Although the European Central Bank (ECB) has been pursuing an aggressively expansionary policy since 2012, previously the ECB was behind the curve in lowering interest rates and making asset purchases to combat the prolonged euro area recession. This paper argues that part of the delay can be attributed to the multi-country nature of the euro area.
Monetary policy in the future | Brookings Institution
I delivered the following remarks at the IMF’s Rethinking Macro Policy III conference on April 15, 2015. Thanks to the International Monetary Fund for inviting me to participate in this panel on “Monetary Policy in the Future.” In the few minutes I have I’ll offer some thoughts on the Fed’s monetary policy framework, its tools for implementing monetary policy, and how both are likely to evolve as we return to a more historically normal economic and policy environment.
World Trade Report 2017 | Brookings Institution
The World Trade Report 2017 aims to deepen understanding about trends in trade, trade policy issues and the multilateral trading system. It focuses on the interdependence between technology and tra...
Commitment to Equity Handbook | Brookings Institution
A how-to guide for assessing the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty Inequality has emerged in recent years as a major topic of economic and political discussion, but it is often unclear whether governments can or should do something about it, and if so, what that something might be. This unique volume, edited by Nora Lustig, an equity expert at Tulane University, helps fill that void.
Management and Resolution of Banking Crises: Lessons from Recent European Experience
Management and Resolution of Banking Crises: Lessons from Recent European Experience Several European countries endured severe and costly banking collapses in the past decade. Central banks (both within the euro area and outside) provided extensive liquidity to keep the payments system running smoothly in most—but not all—of these countries.
Debt and austerity: post-crisis lessons from Ireland
Recorded on 17 November 2015 at Old Theatre, Old Building After a long run of seeming prosperity, the financial crisis left Ireland’s banks more under water and its public and private balance sheets in greater disarray than in most other Western European countries.
Ireland and Brexit | Vox Talks
How can the Irish economy respond to being torn between two neighbours by Brexit? Bob Denham (Econ Films) interviews Patrick Honohan (Trinity College Dublin) on what economic connections do and don’t need to be unpicked, from labour markets to managing the border.
VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal
As the Irish economy is deeply integrated with the UK’s economy, Brexit poses especially severe challenges for Ireland. This column considers a future in which the legal basis for the UK’s economic relations with the EU, and hence with Ireland, is thrown into doubt. A UK withdrawal from the Single Market would raise questions relating to trade ‘re-diversion’, foreign direct investment, the Irish peace agreement, and assured access to British natural gas supplies.
A Slow Negotiation Might Help Achieve a Better Brexit Solution
A Slow Negotiation Might Help Achieve a Better Brexit Solution What happens now to the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, after the Brexit referendum? It has been difficult to learn from British officials and policymakers over the past year what their game plan would be for dealing with the eventuality that has now materialized, namely the loss by the government of its ill-advised referendum on UK membership in the European Union.
RealTime Economic Issues Watch
Find out what our senior staff and colleagues have to say about current economic news, financial developments, regional and country issues, and public policy.
Peterson Institute for International Economics
The Peterson Institute for International Economics is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit institution committed to rigorous, intellectually open, and in-depth study of the challenges facing the global economy. The Institute’s books embody PIIE’s most serious and sustained research on a range of topics, from regional studies to macroeconomics, trade and investment, finance, and globalization and human welfare.
Patrick Honohan: The new micro-prudential regime for banks
Opening statement by Mr Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, to the Oireachtas (National Parliament) Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, Dublin, 28 May 2015. It is just six months since I had the last opportunity to engage with the Committee.
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