We employ two-stage empirical strategy to analyze the impact of macroeconomic news and central bank communication on the exchange rates of three Central and Eastern European (CEE) currencies against the euro. First we estimate the nominal equilibrium exchange rate based on a monetary model....

Swap lines between advanced-economy central banks are a new important part of the global financial architecture. This paper analyses their monetary policy effects from three perspectives. First, from the perspective of the central banks, it shows that the swap line mimics discount-window credit...

This paper provides evidence that the U.S. dollar affects countries' exports through the financial channel of the exchange rate (Bruno and Shin (2015)). Using global data on trade between countries whose currency is not the U.S. dollar, it documents a positive relationship between the dollar and...

This paper studies the reaction of the mean and volatility of the euro-dollar exchange rate to statements of ECB officials during the first years of EMU. We focus on statements on monetary policy and the (potential) strength of the euro. We find that the Bundesbank has dominated the news...

The pending enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has brought to the fore the discussion of the voting right distribution in the European Central Bank (ECB) council. We show that, in a model where labor unions internalize the inflationary consequences of wage setting, deviating from a...

We investigate what happens when the fiscal authorities do not react to rising public debt so that the unpleasant task of fiscal sustainability falls upon the Central Bank (CB). In particular, we explore whether the CB's bond purchases in the secondary market can restore stability and...

The paper discusses key elements of optimal central bank design and applies its findings to the Eurosystem. A particular focus is on the size of monetary policy committees, the degree of centralization, and the representation of relative economic size in the voting rights of regional (or...

In the course of the EU enlargement process, the participation of accession countries in the European Monetary Union might lead to a significant redistribution of seigniorage wealth if current regulations prevail. In general, accession countries will be winners from this redistribution, for...

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 explores the potential effectiveness of the ECBś Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program in safeguarding an appropriate monetary policy transmission. Since the program aims at manipulating bank lending rates by conducting sovereign bond purchases on secondary markets, a stable...