This brief assesses the experiences of Europe's policy regime in the two years since the introduction of the euro in 1999, particularly the performance of the European Central Bank (ECB), the institution in charge of conducting monetary policy for the euro area. Conventional accounts of European...

Contrary to German chancellor Angela Merkel's recent claim, the euro crisis is not nearly over but remains unresolved, leaving the eurozone extraordinarily vulnerable to renewed stresses. In fact, as the reforms agreed to so far have failed to turn the flawed and dysfunctional euro regime into a...

We apply textual analysis to extract the tone (sentiment) from the introductory statements to the ECB’s press conferences regarding economic outlook. By combining this information with Eurosystem/ECB staff macroeconomic projections, we are able to directly estimate the Governing Council’s...

This paper studies the relationship between central bank independence, wage bargaining structure and macroeconomic performance in OECD countries. A cross-sectional time-series (TSCS) model for inflation, nominal wage growth and unemployment for the period 1973-1996 is estimated using different...