Central bank in the context of Monetary reform in the Soviet Union, 1922–24

In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unworkable. Fiscal policy is based on the theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian economics theorised that government changes in the levels of taxation and government spending influence aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal and monetary policy are the key strategies used by a country's government and central bank to advance its economic objectives. The combination of these policies enables these authorities to target inflation and to increase employment. In modern economies, inflation is conventionally considered "healthy" in the range of 2%–3%. Additionally, it is designed to try to keep GDP growth at 2%–3% and the unemployment rate near the natural unemployment rate of 4%–5%. This implies that fiscal policy is used to stabilise the economy over the course of the business cycle.

Changes in the level and composition of taxation and government spending can affect macroeconomic variables, including:

A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned.

A symbol may be positioned in various ways, according to national convention: before, after or between the numeric amounts: $2.50, 2,50€ and 250.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore or (MAS), is the central bank and financial regulatory authority of Singapore. It administers the various statutes pertaining to money, banking, insurance, securities and the financial sector in general, as well as currency issuance and manages the foreign-exchange reserves. It was established in 1971 to act as the banker to and as a financial agent of the Government of Singapore. The body is duly accountable to the Parliament of Singapore through the Minister-in-charge, who is also the Incumbent Chairman of the central bank. In May 2025 the fund had US$629 billion in assets under management.

The Brunei Darussalam Central Bank (abbrev: BDCB; Malay: Bank Pusat Brunei Darussalam) is the central bank of Brunei. In addition to creating the Brunei currency and managing the nation's monetary policy, its major goals consisted of building and upholding domestic price stability, guaranteeing the stability of the financial system, particularly via the creation of prudential standards and financial regulations, and support the establishment and operation of effective.

A banknote or bank note – also called a bill (North American English) or simply a note – is a type of paper money that is made and distributed ("issued") by a bank of issue, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued by commercial banks, which were legally required to redeem the notes for legal tender (usually gold or silver coin) when presented to the chief cashier of the originating bank. These commercial banknotes only traded at face value in the market served by the issuing bank. Commercial banknotes have primarily been replaced by national banknotes issued by central banks or monetary authorities.

By extension, the word "banknote" is sometimes used (including by collectors) to refer more generally to paper money, but in a strict sense notes that have not been issued by banks, e.g. government notes, are not banknotes.

In public finance, a lender of last resort (LOLR) is a financial entity, generally a central bank, that acts as the provider of liquidity to a financial institution which finds itself unable to obtain sufficient liquidity in the interbank lending market when other facilities or such sources have been exhausted. It is, in effect, a government guarantee to provide liquidity to financial institutions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, most central banks have been providers of lender of last resort facilities, and their functions usually also include ensuring liquidity in the international markets in general.

The objective is to prevent economic disruption as a result of financial panics and bank runs spreading from one bank to the others due to a lack of liquidity in the first one.

The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, including the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement until the Jamaica Accords in 1976. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold (or 0.88867 gram fine gold per dollar). It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to countries with balance of payments deficits.

Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still being fought, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference. The delegates deliberated from 1 to 22 July 1944, and signed the Bretton Woods agreement on its final day. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, these accords established the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. The United States, which controlled two-thirds of the world's gold, insisted that the Bretton Woods system rest on both gold and the US dollar. Soviet representatives attended the conference but later declined to ratify the final agreements, charging that the institutions they had created were "branches of Wall Street". These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement. According to Barry Eichengreen, the Bretton Woods system operated successfully due to three factors: "low international capital mobility, tight financial regulation, and the dominant economic and financial position of the United States and the dollar."

The Central Bank of Ireland (Irish: Banc Ceannais na hÉireann) is the national central bank for Ireland within the Eurosystem. It was the Irish central bank from 1943 to 1998, issuing the Irish pound. It is also the country's dominant financial supervisory authority.

The Central Bank of Ireland was founded on 1 February 1943, succeeding the Currency Commission of Ireland, a currency board established in 1922. Since 1 January 1972, it has operated under the Central Bank Act 1971, which completed the transition from the strict post-independence currency peg to the pound sterling to a fully autonomous central bank.

A reserve currency is a foreign currency that is held by governments, central banks or other monetary authorities as part of their foreign exchange reserves. The reserve currency can be used in international transactions, international investments and all aspects of the global economy. It is often considered a hard currency or safe-haven currency.

The United Kingdom's pound sterling was the primary reserve currency of much of the world in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. However, by the middle of the 20th century, the United States dollar had become the world's dominant reserve currency.

In macroeconomics and economic policy, a floating exchange rate (also known as a fluctuating or flexible exchange rate) is a type of exchange rate regime in which a currency's value is allowed to fluctuate in response to international events affecting exchange rates. A currency that uses a floating exchange rate is known as a floating currency. In contrast, a fixed currency is one where its value is specified in terms of material goods, another currency, or a group of other currencies. The idea of a fixed currency is to reduce currency fluctuations.

In the modern world, most of the world's currencies are floating, and include the majority of the most widely traded currencies: the United States dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen, the pound sterling, or the Australian dollar. However, even with floating currencies, central banks sometimes participate in markets to attempt to influence the value of floating exchange rates. The Canadian dollar has not seen interference by the Canadian national bank with its price since September 1998. The US dollar also sees very little change of its foreign reserves.

In economics, an agent is an actor (more specifically, a decision maker) in a model of some aspect of the economy. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well- or ill-defined optimization or choice problem.

For example, buyers (consumers) and sellers (producers) are two common types of agents in partial equilibrium models of a single market. Macroeconomic models, especially dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that are explicitly based on microfoundations, often distinguish households, firms, and governments or central banks as the main types of agents in the economy. Each of these agents may play multiple roles in the economy; households, for example, might act as consumers, as workers, and as voters in the model. Some macroeconomic models distinguish even more types of agents, such as workers and shoppers or commercial banks.

Paper money, often referred to as a note or a bill (North American English), is a type of negotiable promissory note that is payable to the bearer on demand, making it a form of currency. The main types of paper money are government notes, which are directly issued by political authorities, and banknotes issued by banks, namely banks of issue including central banks. In some cases, paper money may be issued by other entities than governments or banks, for example merchants in pre-modern China and Japan. "Banknote" is often used synonymously for paper money, not least by collectors, but in a narrow sense banknotes are only the subset of paper money that is issued by banks.

Paper money is often, but not always, legal tender, meaning that courts of law are required to recognize them as satisfactory payment of money debts.

In monetary economics, the currency in circulation in a country is the value of currency or cash (banknotes and coins) that has ever been issued by the country’s monetary authority less the amount that has been removed. More broadly, money in circulation is the total money supply of a country, which can be defined in various ways, but always includes currency and also some types of bank deposits, such as deposits at call.

The published amount of currency in circulation tends to be overstated by an unknown amount. For example, money may have been destroyed, or stored as a form of security (the proverbial “money under the mattress”), or by coin collectors, or held in reserve within the banking system, including currency held by foreign central banks as a foreign exchange reserve asset.

Keynesian economics (/ˈkeɪnziən/ KAYN-zee-ən; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output and inflation. In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. It is influenced by a host of factors that sometimes behave erratically and impact production, employment, and inflation.

Keynesian economists generally argue that aggregate demand is volatile and unstable and that, consequently, a market economy often experiences inefficient macroeconomic outcomes, including recessions when demand is too low and inflation when demand is too high. Further, they argue that these economic fluctuations can be mitigated by economic policy responses coordinated between a government and their central bank. In particular, fiscal policy actions taken by the government and monetary policy actions taken by the central bank, can help stabilize economic output, inflation, and unemployment over the business cycle. Keynesian economists generally advocate a regulated market economy – predominantly private sector, but with an active role for government intervention during recessions and depressions.

The ruble or rouble (Russian: рубль, romanized: rublʹ; symbol: ₽; ISO code: RUB) is the official currency of the Russian Federation. Banknotes and coins are issued by the Central Bank of Russia, which is Russia's monetary authority independent of all other government bodies.

The ruble is the third-oldest currency in continuous use and the first decimal currency. The ruble was the currency of the Russian Empire, which was replaced by the Soviet ruble (code: SUR, 810) during the Soviet Union. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, by 1992, the Soviet ruble was replaced in the Russian Federation by the Russian ruble (code: RUR, 810) at par. The Russian ruble then further continued to be used in 11 post-Soviet states, forming a "ruble zone" until 1993. The ruble was further redenominated with the new ISO 4217 code "RUB, 643" just preceding the 1998 financial crisis, and was exchanged at the rate of 1000 RUR = 1 RUB. Code "RUR, 810" was then excluded from both the ISO 4217 standard and the Russian currency classifier [ru], but continues to be used for numbering bank accounts internally within Russia.

Industrial production is a measure of output of the industrial sector of the economy. The industrial sector includes manufacturing, mining, and utilities. Although these sectors contribute only a small portion of gross domestic product (GDP), they are highly sensitive to interest rates and consumer demand. This makes industrial production an important tool for forecasting future GDP and economic performance. Industrial production figures are also used by central banks to measure inflation, as high levels of industrial production can lead to uncontrolled levels of consumption and rapid inflation .

Foreign exchange reserves (also called forex reserves or FX reserves) are cash and other reserve assets such as gold and silver held by a central bank or other monetary authority that are primarily available to balance payments of the country, influence the foreign exchange rate of its currency, and to maintain confidence in financial markets. Reserves are held in one or more reserve currencies, nowadays mostly the United States dollar and to a lesser extent the euro.

Foreign exchange reserves assets can comprise banknotes, bank deposits, and government securities of the reserve currency, such as bonds and treasury bills. Some countries hold a part of their reserves in gold, and special drawing rights are also considered reserve assets. Often, for convenience, the cash or securities are retained by the central bank of the reserve or other currency and the "holdings" of the foreign country are tagged or otherwise identified as belonging to the other country without them actually leaving the vault of that central bank. From time to time they may be physically moved to the home or another country.

In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national currency in relation to a foreign reference currency or currency basket. The opposite of devaluation, a change in the exchange rate making the domestic currency more expensive, is called a revaluation. A monetary authority (e.g., a central bank) maintains a fixed value of its currency by being ready to buy or sell foreign currency with the domestic currency at a stated rate; a devaluation is an indication that the monetary authority will buy and sell foreign currency at a lower rate.

However, under a floating exchange rate system (in which exchange rates are determined by market forces acting on the foreign exchange market, and not by government or central bank policy actions), a decrease in a currency's value relative to other major currency benchmarks is instead called depreciation; likewise, an increase in the currency's value is called appreciation.