. doubt enhances the ability of central banks to achieve price stability. there has also been an advance in our understanding of how to conduct monetary policy to achieve stable rates of inflation, at least on average over a period of years, and perhaps also to contribute, at the same time, to smoothing output and employment growth. over the last ten to fifteen years, coinciding with both an increased emphasis on the price stability objective and the advances in our understanding about the conduct of policy, inflation performance has been very good. however, some countries today continue to impose constraints on discretionary monetary policy through fixed exchange rate regimes, tying their inflation rates to inflation in the country to which their exchange rate is pegged. this system does not eliminate the influence of discretion, but it makes inflation in one country dependent on the discretionary monetary policy in some other country. a currency board and dollarization are tighter versions of a fixed exchange rate regime - - that is, fixed exchange rate systems from which it is progressively more costly to exit. the payments system today the payment systems in use today rely on concepts developed in the eighteenth century and before as well as on those developed in the twentieth century. paper instruments are vital to commerce and so are electronic systems. to understand the long - term incentive for the spread of electronic payments and potentially new forms of money, one must appreciate the complexities and costs associated with our current payment system. as checks came into more widespread use, banks that accepted checks for deposit had to find ways to exchange checks drawn on a variety of other banks and to receive appropriate value for those checks - - processes called “ collection ” and “ settlement. ” first, banks sent messengers directly to other banks to collect the money due to them and their customers, the direct presentment method of check collection. second, out - of - town banks would send checks to a correspondent bank, which in turn would collect the check, the correspondent banking method. both of these methods required significant travel and could require the movement of large amounts of banknotes or gold. according to banking lore, a third solution to the interbank check collection problem evolved at a british pub. a london bank messenger stopped by for a pint ( or two ) and allegedly met another bank messenger. they quickly discovered that they each had checks drawn on the other ’ s bank and decided to save time by exchanging them on the spot. more messengers joined the group. these messengers found that they could not only centralize the exchange of checks,

, many still living at home with parents. there were also a lot of actual parents in my classes and people who had to work full - time jobs while completing their education. i once had a student who needed to reschedule a final exam because she had to go to court to fight for custody of her child. i had students who struggled to secure childcare to attend class, others who struggled with access to transportation to and from campus. the hurdles they often had to overcome were daunting. and while many obtained loans and other tuition 3 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches assistance, the challenges they faced were multidimensional, and i often found myself thinking that their education would be much more successful if they had support in other areas of their lives. i had written two papers on a training program in colombia that included a stipend for workers. 3 the stipend was intended to subsidize transportation for workers, with an extra amount for women that was intended to supplement their costs for childcare. the results found a significant boost to wages and employment from the training program, especially for women, and we found that the gains stayed with those workers for over a decade after the program. moreover, we also found that the program encouraged workers and even their relatives to pursue more formal schooling - high school and even college. but these papers didn't allow me to explore the separate contribution of the stipend to the wage, employment, and educational gains we found. my own experience with students at the university of houston suggested that this more comprehensive support for the workers in training was important, so i decided to follow up on my research. so i wrote another paper - jointly with felipe barrera - osorio and mikko silliman - based on an experiment we conducted in collaboration with a training program. 4 in this experiment, we randomly offered stipends to some but not all workers. students might use the stipend to pay for transportation to and from the program, or perhaps to help cover meals during the program, depending on what they saw as their most pressing needs. i like to call this a form of " wraparound " support ; the stipend wraps around the main program to make it easier for people to participate. some workers accepted to the training program were put in a class that focused on technical skills, and others in a class emphasizing social skills - again using random assignment. we found that participants saw an increase in employment, hours