This paper attempts to characterise an anti-inflationary monetary targeting (MT) regime. In order to derive a formal representation of this regime, we formulate the central bank's optimisation problem under the assumption that it is possible for the monetary targeted variable to have an impact...

We study optimal monetary policy in a flexible state-dependent pricing framework, in which monopolistic competition and stochastic menu costs are the only distortions. We show analytically that it is optimal to commit to zero inflation in the long run. Moreover, our numerical simulations...

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates more vigorously in the recent recession than the European Central Bank did. By comparison with the Fed, the ECB followed a more measured course of action. We use an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions to show that...

This paper employs stochastic simulations of the New Area-Wide Model -- a micro-founded open-economy model developed at the ECB -- to investigate the consequences of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates for the evolution of risks to price stability in the Euro area during the recent...

The paper studies the inflation rate associated with optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a number of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with nominal price rigidities. While the focus is on Calvo-style nominal price contracts with a range of indexation rules for constrained...

This paper shows that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy. When the central bank enjoys only limited credibility a pegged exchange rate regime yields a...

This paper first shows that the forecast error incurred when assuming that future inflation will be equal to the inflation target announced by the central bank is typically at least as small and often smaller than forecast errors of model-based and published inflation forecasts. It then shows...

There is a broad consensus in the literature that costs of information processing and acquisition may generate costly disagreements in expectations among economic agents, and that central banks may play a central role in reducing such dispersion in expectations. This paper analyses empirically...

We show that the composition of imports has important implications for the optimal volatility of the exchange rate. Using input-output data for 25 countries we document substantial differences in the import and non-tradable content of final demand components, and in the role played by imported...

The effects of the unconventional monetary policy (UMP) measures undertaken by the U.S. Federal Reserve (and other major central banks) remain a crucial topic for research. This paper investigates their effects on the anchoring of long-term inflation expectations, a key dimension of UMP that has...