We find that real interest rates paid on government debt depend significantly upon current and expected future levels of debt, in Europe as in the US. But this result only emerges when we condition on foreign interest rates, illustrating financial international integration. The previously strong...

Over the past 15 years there has been remarkable progress in the specification and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Central banks in developed and emerging market economies have become increasingly interested in their usefulness for policy analysis and...

The Eurosystem has been pursuing a crisis management policy for more than four years now. This policy aims primarily at maintaining financial stability in the euro area by providing vast liquidity support to commercial banks that are operating in nationally segmented banking systems. As a side...

This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB...

In a model with forward-looking expectations, the paper examines communication of central bank forecasts when the inflation target is subject to unobserved changes. It characterizes the effect of disclosure of forecasts on inflation and output stabilization and the choice of an active versus...

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by Norges Bank which is recognized as a successful forecast targeting central bank. It is reasonable to expect that Norges Bank produces inflation forecasts that are on average better than other forecasts, both 'naïve' forecasts, and forecasts from...

Between 1995 and 2005, the German economy has experienced a phase of weak economic growth. We analyze whether this weak growth performance can be attributed to the stance of monetary conditions during that period. We show that the real effective exchange rate did have almost no dampening effects...

Models in which firms use a rule of thumb or partial indexing in price setting are prominent in the recent monetary policy literature. The extent to which these firms adjust their prices to lagged inflation has been taken as fixed. We consider the implications of firms choosing the optimal...

Using a New Keynesian macro model, the paper reconsiders the question, whether the central banks should directly respond to exchange rate movements. It is assumed that the transmission of monetary policy to output is carried out by the long-term interest rate, which is determined as a sum of...

There seems to be no consensus in the literature with respect to monetary policy strategies in combination with flexible exchange rate regimes. Therefore, this paper determines what the alternative strategies inflation targeting, Taylor rule, monetary conditions index, and managed floating have...