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...

The article discusses the relationship between the central bank balance sheet, the monetary base, monetary aggregates and credit in the euro area. In particular, it looks at the choice of the operational procedures available to the central bank, and for this purpose it compares the current...

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...