Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries. We use quarterly data in the 1980.1-2005.4 period and exclude EMU countries. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant index of central bank independence with...

After the dramatic rescue package for the euro area, the governing council of the European Central Bank decided to purchase European government bonds - to ensure an "orderly monetary policy transmission mechanism". Many observers argued that, by bond purchases, national fiscal policies could...

We assess the differences that emerge in Taylor rule estimations for the ECB when using ex-post data instead of real time forecasts and vice versa. We argue that previous comparative studies in this field mixed up two separate effects. First, the differences resulting from the use of ex-post and...

We analyze the importance of global shocks for the global economy and national policy makers. More specifically, we investigate whether monetary policy has become less effective in the wake of financial globalization. We also examine whether there is increasing uncertainty for central banks due...

In this paper, we explore the role of labor markets for monetary policy in the euro area in a New Keynesian model in which labor markets are characterized by search and matching frictions. We first investigate to which extent a more flexible labor market would alter the business cycle behaviour...

In this paper, we outline a version of the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) of the euro area designed for use in the (Broad) Macroeconomic Projection Exercises regularly undertaken by ECB/Eurosystem staff. We present estimation results for the NAWM that are obtained by employing Bayesian inference...

Forward guidance operates via the expectations formation process of the agents in the economy. In standard quantitative macroeconomic models, the expectations are unobserved state variables and little scrutiny is devoted to analysing the dynamic behaviour of these expectations. We show that the...

This paper considers how monetary policy produces heterogeneous effects on euro area households, depending on the composition of their income and on the components of their wealth. We first review the existing evidence on how monetary policy affects income and wealth inequality. We then...

We study the relationship between monetary policy and long-term rates in a structural, general equilibrium model estimated on both macro and yields data from the United States. Regime shifts in the conditional variance of productivity shocks, or "uncertainty shocks", are an important model...