Whether a central bank should share with the public its views about the future evolution of short term interest rates is an unresolved issue. Disclosing this information might allow a more precise control of market expectations and a more effective achievement of the ultimate goals of the...

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

The aim of this paper is to design the optimal institutional arrangement for a monetary union. Using a two-country rational expectations model, the study analyses how the conservatism of the area-wide central bank and the penalty system for fiscal deviation (Stability and Growth Pact) should be...

The ECB objective of price stability is given a quantitative content as a year-on-year growth rate in the euro area HICP close but below 2% over the medium term. While this objective is referred to area-wide price developments, in anticipating monetary policy moves, market analysts pay...

This paper tests cross-sectional differences in the effectiveness of the bank lending channel of monetary policy in Italy from 1986 to 1998 using a panel approach. After a monetary tightening the decrease in deposits subject to reserve requirements is sharper for those banks that have less...

We obtain new evidence on the transmission of monetary policy to the economy by analyzing the effects of restrictive monetary policy shocks on Italian flows of funds over the period 1980-2002. Firms reduce their issuance of debt and their acquisitions of financial assets, so there is no evidence...

The paper examines micro data on Italian manufacturing firms� inventory behavior to test the Meltzer (1960) hypothesis according to which firms substitute trade credit for bank credit during periods of monetary tightening. It finds that their inventory investment is constrained by the...

This paper proposes a possible way of assessing the effect on interest rate dynamics of changes in the decision-making approach, in the communication strategy and in the operational framework of a central bank. Through a GARCH specification we show that the US and the euro area displayed a...