Current best practice in central banking views a high level of monetary policy predictability as desirable. A clear distinction, however, has to be made between short-term and longer-term predictability. While short-term predictability can be narrowly defined as the ability of the public to...

The prolonged crisis exposed the vulnerability of a monetary union without a banking union. The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which started operating in November 2014, is an essential step towards restoring banks to health and rebuilding trust in the banking system. The ECB is today...

The ECB’s price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has...

This paper examines the importance of central bank communication in ensuring the effectiveness of monetary policy and in underpinning the credibility, accountability and legitimacy of independent central banks. It documents how communication has become a monetary policy tool in itself; one...

This paper analyses the implications of climate change for the conduct of monetary policy in the euro area. It first investigates macroeconomic and financial risks stemming from climate change and from policies aimed at climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as the regulatory and fiscal...

The ECB's monetary policy has received considerable attention in recent years. This is less the case, however, for its regular monetary policy preparation and decision-making process. This paper reviews how the factors usually considered as critical for the success of a central banking system...

This paper provides a summary of current knowledge on inflation persistence and price stickiness in the euro area, based on research findings that have been produced in the context of the Inflation Persistence Network. The main findings are: i) Under the current monetary policy regime, the...

Euro area countries exhibited modest convergence prior to the financial crisis and diverged thereafter. Such divergence has been examined from many angles, and various narratives of the crisis have developed. Surprisingly, the gradual transformation of the economic structures of euro area...

This paper provides a chronology of the main financial events over the last 15 years, spanning three main crises. The first is the global financial crisis in 2008-09, and the second is the euro area sovereign debt crisis in 2010-12. Both events heralded significant reforms of the EU’s...

This paper presents a European Index of Regional Institutional Integration (EURII), which maps developments in European integration from 1958 to 2014 on the basis of a monthly dataset. EURII captures what we call: (i) the “Common Market Era”, which lasted from 1958 until 1993; and (ii) the first...