The aim of the present analysis is to shed light on the question whether Central Banks should publish their macroeconomic forecasts, and what could possibly be gained in monetary policy if they did so. We show that disclosing the Central Bank’s assessment of the prevailing inflationary...

The emergence of the New Consensus in monetary policy has been followed by a renewal of interest in central banks’ operating procedures, and specifically in the role of open market operations. There is a general view that overnight interest rates are most effectively controlled by standing or...

The paper concentrates on illustrating and assessing central banks’ liquidity operations during the crisis that started in August 2007. In addition to the ECB, the central banks of Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States are analyzed. During the...

Disinflationary episodes are a valuable source of information for economic agents trying to learn about the economy. In this paper we are particularly interested in how policymakers can themselves learn by disinflating. The approach differs from the existing literature, which typically focuses...

In this paper, we examine the incentives for central bank activism and caution in a two-country open-economy model with uncertainty and learning. We find that the presence of a strategic interaction between the home and foreign central banks creates an additional motivation for caution in...

This paper investigates the views of electronic money operators and innovators on the possibilities and implications of e-money, especially with respect to replacing central bank money as well as technical issues regarding e-money, its implications for the financial industry and central banking....

This paper argues that, despite the substantial independence offered by the Maastricht Treaty, the ESCB will wish to bind itself by a set of voluntary rules in the conduct of monetary policy. This binding will occur because of the demands of policy itself. The ESCB as such has no history of a...