The intra-daily efficacy of interventions by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is examined for the 1986–94 period. The paper extends results from earlier studies because it uses the actual intervention exchange rates and all SNB interventions are known to the market. Our test of the signalling...

Inflation targeting has become the monetary policy framework of the nineties. At the other extreme, several central banks have recently adopted key elements of the inflation targeter's toolkit, but at the same time they have made formal declarations that they are not inflation targeters. Such a...

It is often argued that interventions provide news on changes in risk premia or in future monetary policy. If so, the timing of interventions offers important information for central bank watchers. One method to study the reaction function of a central bank is to consider whether the duration...

The timely release of macroeconomic data imposes a distinct structure on the panel: the clustering and sequential ordering of real and nominal variables. We call this orderly release of economic data sequential information flow. The ordered panel generates a new class of restrictions that are...

This paper examines a special episode in communication practices of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) when short-term interest rates reached the zero bound. A particular feature of SNB communication policy at the time was to talk openly about alternative policy instruments despite the fact that they...

This paper analyzes the pass-through from import prices to CPI inflation in real time. Our strategy follows an event-study approach, which compares inflation forecasts before and after import price releases. Inflation forecasts are modelled using a dynamic factor procedure that relies on daily...

This study seeks to determine if there were identifiable contrasts between the Austrian and Thai pegs that would have hinted at problems for Thailand prior to July 1997. The strategy is to first estimate a reaction function of a successful pegging country, i.e. Austria, to help identify salient...

One test of an exchange-rate peg is to ask whether the implicit inflation target of the pegging country is the same as that of the anchor country. If the inflation targets of the two countries are different, the peg's long-run credibility should be rejected. We examine the Austrian experience...

A new procedure for shock identification of macroeconomic forecasts based on factor analysis is proposed. The identification scheme relies on daily panels and on the recognition that macroeconomic releases exhibit a high level of clustering. A large number of data releases on a single day is of...

The monetary debate in Switzerland about joining the European Monetary Union (EMU) has primarily focused on the gains in terms of transaction costs and lower uncertainty from using a common currency versus the sacrifice of giving up an independent monetary policy. This Paper considers an...