In many developing and developed countries, government debt stabilization is an important policy issue. This paper models the strategic interaction between the monetary authorities who control monetization and the fiscal authorities who control primary fiscal deficits. Government debt dynamics...

The replacement of national currencies by a common currency in the EMU causes a monetary externality if the European Central Bank is inclined to monetize part of outstanding government debt in the community.High government debt in one part of the EU then increases the common inflation rate.We...

We analyse the proposed "Stability Pact" for countries joining a European Monetary Union (EMU). In an EMU shortsighted governments fail to fully internalise the inflationary consequences of their debt policies. This results in excessive debt accumulation. Therefore, while in the absence of EMU...

Abstract: Central banks in fluence financial markets' expectations of its future policy. By providing its stance on the prospects of the economy, rationalizing past decisions or announcing future actions, central banks affect financial markets' forecasts. In bad times monetary policy...

This paper examines the effect of monetary policy on the exchange rate during currency crises. Using data for a number of crisis episodes between 1986 and 2004, we find strong evidence that raising the interest rate: (i) has larger adverse balance sheet effects and is therefore less effective in...

We provide an up-to-date overview of the literature on the desirabil- ity of central bank transparency from an economic viewpoint. Since the move towards more transparency, a lot of research on its e¤ects has been carried out. First, we show how the theoretical literature has evolved, by...

We look at the implications of uncertain monetary policy preferences for the targeting and contracting approach to monetary stability. It turns out that in presence of uncertain preferences a linear incentive contract in the sense of Walsh (1995) performs better in terms of social welfare than...

If discretionary monetary policy implies an inflation bias, monetary unification boosts the accumulation of public debt. The additional debt accumulation is welfare reducing only if governments are sufficiently myopic. In the presence of myopic governments, debt ceilings play a useful role in...

This paper starts with a discussion of the various aspects of accountability of central banks. On the basis of this discussion we construct an indicator for accountability for 16 central banks, including the European Central Bank. It is shown that the degree of accountability differs...

Central banks have become more and more transparent about their monetary policy making process. In the central bank transparency lit- erature the distinction between actual and perceived central bank trans- parency is often lacking. However, as perceptions are crucial for the ac- tions of...