During the past fifteen years, financial markets in Latin America have experienced a major transformation. This process and its effects on the nature of risks and policy challenges in Latin America were the focus of a May 2007 conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Representative Office for...

The Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) is a temporary research network with the main objective of identifying the characteristics of wage dynamics and drawing conclusions from them in monetary policy terms. The paper presents the main findings of this research work. Notably, the intersectoral wage...

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...

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...

This article presents a summary of the main results produced by the Inflation Persistence Network (IPN), a network of researchers from the twelve national central banks of the euro area, the ECB and the universities, which aimed to conduct a joint analysis of Inflation persistence and pricing...

The article addresses recent trends in the financing costs of various public and private sectors in the euro area and Belgium. It pays particular attention to the monetary policy transmission process via the interest rate channel during the crisis and notably examines the extent to which the...

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...

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...

1 January 1999 saw the start of the third and final phase of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Ten years on, membership has expanded from the initial 11 members to reach 16 countries by January 2009. This article reviews the first decade of monetary union from a number of angles....

The article deals with inflation dynamics in Belgium, and in particular the degree of inflation persistence. It also presents a historical perspective in order to determine whether the statistical properties of the inflation process have changed over time. The analysis revealed significant...