The paper empirically analyzes asymmetries in the EMS with special reference to their implication for the creation of a monetary union (EMU). Two types of asymmetries are analyzed: those in the form of "German dominance" are detected in the conduct of monetary policies in the EMS, in particular...

The origins of stagflation and the possibility of its recurrence continue to be an important concern among policymakers and in the popular press. It is common to associate the origins of the Great Stagflation of the 1970s with the two major oil price increases of 1973/74 and 1979/80. This paper...

According to most academics and policymakers, transparency in monetary policymaking is desirable. I examine this proposition in a small theoretical model emphasizing forward-looking private sector behaviour. Transparency makes it easier for price setters to infer the central bank's future policy...

In this paper we study the relationship between labour market institutions and monetary policy. We use a simple macroeconomic framework to show how optimal monetary policy rules depend on labour institutions (labour adjustment costs, and nominal and real wage rigidity) and social preferences...

This paper evaluates models that exploit timely monthly releases to compute early estimates of current quarter GDP (now-casting) in the euro area. We compare traditional methods used at institutions with a new method proposed by Giannone, Reichlin and Small, 2005. The method consists in bridging...

Monetary policy analysts often rely on rules-of-thumb, such as the Taylor rule, to describe historical monetary policy decisions and to compare current policy to historical norms. Analysis along these lines also permits evaluation of episodes where policy may have deviated from a simple rule and...

This paper probes the limits of transparency in monetary policymaking along two dimensions: feasibility and desirability. It argues that, due to limited knowledge about the economy, even central banks that are considered champions of openness are not very clear about their measures of the output...

In this Paper we analyse how monetary policies will be affected in a cashless society. Our main conclusions are that the central bank will lose its traditional instruments of monetary policy. Open market operations and advances to banks will become ineffective as instruments to control the...

Several recent studies imply that the response of national saving to fiscal policy is non-monotonic. In this paper, we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non-monotonic responses arise: one refers to a sample of OECD countries, as in previous studies, and one to a...