During the summer of 2009, Belgium and the euro area, as well as other industrialised countries, recorded negative inflation rates. Although they were the direct result of sharply falling commodity prices in the second half of 2008, policy-makers and the general public wondered whether this...

In the wake of the two longer-term refinancing operations with a maturity of three years conducted in December 2011 and February 2012, amounts placed on the Eurosystem’s deposit facility surged to unprecedented high levels of around € 800 billion. The article clarifies how this high recourse...

This paper studies the nature of optimal monetary policy under a utility-maximizing monetary authority in a micro-founded model of money based on Lagos and Wright (2005). Such a monetary authority represents a monopoly private money supplier or situations where fiscal policy drives monetary...

In a recent paper, Adão et al. (2011), using a cash-in-advance framework, derive an interest rate rule that results in a unique monetary equilibrium. The resulting interest rate rule is forward looking and the interest rate responds positively to forecasts of future real activity and to...

I determine expected long-run inflation in a two-state New Keynesian model driven by natural interest-rate uncertainty. Monetary policy switches between discretion in ‘normal times’ and zero-lower-bound episodes when it is passive. Long-run US inflation ranges from −1.8% to +1.2% p.a.

The article examines the link between monetary policy and financial stability in the context of the recent financial and economic crisis. It aims to draw lessons from those recent events and to examine the implications for monetary policy. More specifically, it asks whether, apart from its price...

We extend Ruge-Murcia (2003, 2004) to weigh inflation and output and show that empirical evidence supports an asymmetric preference hypothesis for output. We also find evidence that the monetary authority targets potential output in parallel to Barro and Gordon (1983).

This paper examines sustainability of an inflation-targeting policy regime in terms of sustainable equilibrium using a canonical model in the recent literature. Overly flexible inflation targeting is not sustainable. Strict inflation targeting is sustainable only when shock persistence is high...

Globalisation, which has been accelerating since the mid nineties, has triggered important economic changes. The article deals with three possible consequences of globalisation which might be relevant for monetary policy. Possible implications for the conduct of monetary policy are also...

We investigate the role of exchange rates in inflation-targeting emerging economies. We give strong evidence that hybrid inflation-targeting frameworks, where exchange rate is managed, deliver a stronger nominal anchor, as they show better resistance to the 2007–2008 inflation shock.