The ECB Working Paper Series seeks to disseminate economic research on issues that are relevant to the various tasks and functions of the ECB. The Series invites submissions of research work by ECB staff and visitors. Papers by researchers not affiliated with the ECB may also be considered for...

Monetary Policy Committees differ in the way the interest rate proposal is preparedand presented in the policy meeting. In this paper we show analytically how differentarrangements could affect the voting behaviour of individual MPC members andtherefore policy outcomes. We then apply our results...

Existing work on wage bargaining (as exemplified by Cukierman and Lippi, 2001) typicallypredicts more aggressive wage setting under monetary union. This insight has not beenconfirmed by the EMU experience, which has been characterised by wage moderation,thereby eliciting criticism from Posen and...

How do financial markets price new information? This paper analyzes price setting atthe intersection of private and public information, by testing whether and how thereaction of financial markets to public signals depends on the relative importance ofprivate information in agents’ information...

The increasing weight of open market transactions in central bank operations and the widening use of purchase agreements underlines a progress towards convergence of monetary policy instruments and procedures in EU countries. This paper presents a survey of features of open market operations...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the use of monetary policy instruments and procedures (MPIP) in EU countries. In particular, it focuses on three important issues which arise in this context. Fist, we examine the structural position of the EU money markets. Second , evidence is...

We evaluate the ECB’s monetary policy strategy against the underlying economic structure of the euro area economy, in normal times and in times of severe financial dislocations. We show that in the years preceding the financial crisis that started in 2007 the strategy was successful at...

This paper presents the methodological and statistical framework for macro-prudential analysis of the financial condition of the EU banking sector that has been adopted by the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The framework is also a central component of broader financial stability...

This paper explores whether there are systematic patterns as to when members of the decision-making committees of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank communicate with the public, and under what circumstances such communication has the ability to move financial...

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication —mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...