The paper discusses key elements of optimal central bank design and applies its findings to the Eurosystem. A particular focus is on the size of monetary policy committees, the degree of centralization, and the representation of relative economic size in the voting rights of regional (or...

This paper investigates dynamic currency hedging benefits, with a further focus on the impact of currency hedging before and during the recent financial crises originated from the subprime and the Euro sovereign bonds. We take the point of view of a Euro-based institutional investor who...

The paper proposes an alternative benchmark to the EURIBOR to analyze the post-crisis puzzling behavior of deposit rates in the Eurozone. Using bank-level CDS data for 6 major euro-countries, we build a simple country-level index for banks' cost of unsecured funding. The use of this index...

The Eurosystem staff forecasts are conditional on the financial markets, the global economy and fiscal policy outlook, and include expert judgement. We develop a multi-country BVAR for the four largest countries of the euro area and we show that it provides accurate conditional forecasts of...

This paper puts forward a characterization of the structural features of the economic system relevant to the monetary-policy decisions of the European Central Bank. The econometric analysis adopts a parsimonious VAR representation of three key macroeconomic variables (interest rates, prices and...

The Eurosystem staff forecasts are conditional on the financial markets, the global economy and fiscal policy outlook, and include expert judgement. We develop a multi-country BVAR for the four largest countries of the euro area and we show that it provides accurate conditional forecasts of...

We study the feasibility and benefits of implementing an across-the-curve credit spread index for the Eurozone. We propose a methodology which takes into account specific features of Euro-denominated wholesale funding markets. We discuss the role for hedge accounting and the advantages of using...