It is widely believed that the Fed controls the funds rate by altering the degree of pressure in the reserve market through open market operations when it changes its target for the federal funds rate. Recently, however, several economists have suggested that open market operations may not be...

This paper assesses the performance of monetary indicators in predicting euro area HICP inflation out-of-sample over the period since the start of EMU considering a wide range of forecasting models, including standard bivariate forecasting models, factor models, simple combination forecasts as...

This paper investigates the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area based on the factor augmented vector autoregressive approach of Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (2005) as well as on a standard VAR model. We focus on the reaction of monetary aggregates to a one-off monetary policy shock....

In a surprisingly growing number of regions in Germany private "regional currencies" are issued as a cash substitute for the euro. Currently, these regional currencies are conceived almost exclusively as Schwundgeld (depreciative currency), which loses value on a predetermined timescale. This...

Our paper studies the relationship between money growth and consumer price inflation in the euro area using wavelet analysis. Wavelet analysis allows to account for variations in the money growth-inflation relationship both across the frequency spectrum and across time. We find evidence of...

SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) took the opportunity of the first anniversary of this new institution to organise a joint conference in Berlin on 8-9 November 2011. The purpose of this event was...

Structural VAR studies disagree with narrative accounts about the history of monetary policy disturbances. We investigate whether employing the narrative monetary shock account as a proxy variable in a VAR model aligns both shock series. We quantify the extent to which the disagreement still...

The recent crisis in the United States has often been associated with substantial amounts of policy uncertainty. In this paper we ask how uncertainty about fiscal policy affects the impact of fiscal policy changes on the economy when the government tries to counteract a deep recession. The...

Most EU member states will adopt fiscal rules that refer to cyclically-adjusted borrowing limits. Under the standard cyclical adjustment procedure, trend increases in public debt based on cyclical components are prevented if the real-time output gaps used to calculate cyclical components balance...

We propose a nonparametric test that distinguishes 'depressions' and 'booms' from ordinary recessions and expansions. Depressions and booms are defined as coming from another underlying process than recessions and expansions. We find four depressions and booms in the NBER business cycle between...