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...

During the summer of 2014 the Eurosystem cut its inflation projections for the euro area up to 2016. During August, the financial markets also indicated a significant fall in medium-term inflation expectations. Moreover, the decline in current inflation and the fall in other business cycle...

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...

Since the onset of the financial crisis, the Eurosystem has cut interest rates on several occasions and has assumed an increasingly prominent role as a financial intermediary. It stepped up its lending to liquidity-constrained banks and at the same time gave cash-rich banks the opportunity to...

Recent developments in stock and house prices revived the debate on the role of asset prices in the conduct of monetary policy. The article first explores the links between asset price fluctuations, macroeconomic developments and monetary policy, highlighting the possibility of asset price booms...

The article presents the results of surveys on several qualitative aspects of pricing behaviour, conducted within the framework of the Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network (IPN). The surveys cover more than 11,000 firms in nine euro area countries. Despite some methodological differences...

In the past few months, euro area money markets have been exposed to intense tensions. On 8 August, overnight interest rates rose to very high levels which required interventions of the Eurosystem in order to stabilise short-term money market interest rates around the target level, i.e. the...

After two decades of successfully restoring price stability in much of the world economy, central banks begin the next millennium facing a new set of challenges. One key task is how to conduct monetary policy in an era of price stability. Clearly, policymakers would like inflation to remain...

Despite the low inflation of recent years, some observers have wondered whether rapid gains in U.S. asset prices foreshadow rising inflationary pressures. Would U.S. monetary policy be improved if Federal Reserve policymakers reacted systematically to changes in the prices of widely held assets...