During the summer of 2009, Belgium and the euro area, as well as other industrialised countries, recorded negative inflation rates. Although they were the direct result of sharply falling commodity prices in the second half of 2008, policy-makers and the general public wondered whether this...

After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the...

In the wake of the two longer-term refinancing operations with a maturity of three years conducted in December 2011 and February 2012, amounts placed on the Eurosystem’s deposit facility surged to unprecedented high levels of around € 800 billion. The article clarifies how this high recourse...

The article examines the link between monetary policy and financial stability in the context of the recent financial and economic crisis. It aims to draw lessons from those recent events and to examine the implications for monetary policy. More specifically, it asks whether, apart from its price...

This paper explores the relationship between central bank independence and inflation in Latin America, using as a case study the experience of Colombia (1923-2008). Since its creation, in 1923, Colombia´s central bank has undergone several reforms that have changed its objectives and degree of...

Globalisation, which has been accelerating since the mid nineties, has triggered important economic changes. The article deals with three possible consequences of globalisation which might be relevant for monetary policy. Possible implications for the conduct of monetary policy are also...

The sudden collapse of oil prices poses a challenge to inflation targeting central banks in oil exporting economies. This paper illustrates that challenge and conducts a quantitative assessment of the impact of permanent changes in oil prices in a small and open economy, in which oil represents...

This article presents a summary of the main results produced by the Inflation Persistence Network (IPN), a network of researchers from the twelve national central banks of the euro area, the ECB and the universities, which aimed to conduct a joint analysis of Inflation persistence and pricing...

In this paper we study the effect of monetary policy shocks on commodity prices. While most of the literature has found that expansionary shocks have a positive effect on aggregate price indices, we study the effect on individual prices of a sample of four commodities. This set of commodity...

This work analyzes the relationship between real interest rates and commodity prices. According to Frankel´s hypothesis (1986-2006): low real interest rates lead to high real commodity prices". However, some empirical evidence suggests that commodity prices can predict monetary policy. In this...