We derive four sets of counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the time period 1999 to 2012. They approximate desirable national interest rates countries would have liked to implement if they could still conduct independent monetary policy. We find that...

This paper studies ECB and Bundesbank communication on monetary policy during the first years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We study whether statements by different (groups of) central bankers have been contradictory and whether differences have diminished over time. We find that...

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication - mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...

Using a time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) with a new sign restriction framework, we study the changing effectiveness of the Bank of Japan's Quantitative Easing policies over time. We analyse the Zero-Interest Rate Policy from 1999 to 2000, the Quantitative Easing Policy from...

We ask whether recent changes in monetary policy due to the financial crisis will be temporary or permanent. We present evidence from two surveys—one of central bank governors, the other of academic specialists. We find that central banks in crisis countries are more likely to have resorted to...

Using post-1995 Japanese data we propose a theory-based sign-restriction SVAR approach to identify monetary policy shocks when the economy is at the zero-lower bound. The identifying restrictions accord with predictions of corresponding DSGE models. Our results show that while a quantitative...