In a contribution prepared for the Athens Symposium on “Banking Union, Monetary Policy and Economic Growth”, Otmar Issing describes forward guidance by central banks as the culmination of the idea of guiding expectations by pure communication. In practice, he argues, forward guidance has...

"Institutional Overburdening" to a large extent was a consequence of the "Great Moderation". This term indicates that it was a period in which inflation had come down from rather high levels. Growth and employment were at least satisfying and variability of output had substantially declined. It...

This Policy White Paper assesses several main elements of ECB's upcoming review of its monetary policy strategy, announced in January 2020. Four aspects of the review are discussed in detail: i) ECB's definition of price stability and the arguments for and against inflation targeting; ii) the...

The financial crisis which started in 2007 has caused a tremendous challenge for monetary policy. The simple concept of inflation targeting has lost its position as state of the art. There is a debate on whether the mandate of a central bank should not be widened. And, indeed, monetary policy...

Well anchored inflation expectations are considered to be a reflection of credible monetary policy. In the past, anchoring has been assessed using either long-run inflation surveys or break-even inflation rates on financial assets with long maturities. But neither of these is ideal. Here we...

We analyse the behaviour of inflation expectations during periods of deflation, using a large cross-country data set of individual professional forecasters' expectations. We find some evidence that expectations become less well anchored during deflations. Deflations are associated with a...

Limited access to the formal financial sector is a common feature of the economic environment in many emerging market and developing economies. In this paper, we examine how the level of financial inclusion affects welfare-maximising monetary policy. Our theoretical framework is based on Galí,...

Large-scale forex intervention in emerging market economies (EMEs) aimed at resisting currency appreciation has major implications for the composition of banking system balance sheets. The domestic monetary consequences depend on the nature of central bank liabilities that are the counterpart of...

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis that started in 2007, policymakers were forced to respond quickly and forcefully to a recession caused not by short-term factors, but rather by an over-accumulation of debt by sovereigns, banks, and households: a so-called "balance sheet recession."...