Evidence on the effectiveness of FX interventions is either limited to short horizons or hampered by debatable identification. We address these limitations by identifying a structural vector autoregressive model for the daily frequency with an external instrument. Generally, we find, for freely...

It is conventionally held that countries are worse off by forming a monetary union when it comes to macroeconomic stabilization. However, this conventional view relies on assuming that monetary policy is conducted optimally. Relaxing the assumption of optimal monetary policy not only uncovers...

The desirability of flexible exchange rates is a central tenet in international macroeconomics. We show that, with forward-looking staggered pricing, this result crucially depends on the monetary authority's ability to commit. Under full commitment, flexible exchange rates generally dominate a...

Whether countries benefit from forming a monetary union depends critically on the way monetary policy is conducted. This is mainly because monetary policy determines whether and to what extent a flexible nominal exchange rate fosters or hampers macroeconomic stabilization, even if monetary...

It is conventionally held that countries are worse off by forming a monetary union when it comes to macroeconomic stabilization. However, this conventional view relies on assuming that monetary policy is conducted optimally. Relaxing the assumption of optimal monetary policy not only uncovers...

Monetary policy rule parameters estimated with conventional estimation techniques can be severely biased if the estimation sample includes periods of low interest rates. Nominal interest rates cannot be negative, so that censored regression methods like Tobit estimation have to be used to...

This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB...

I analyze spillover effects from Euro area monetary policy shocks to thirteen EU countries outside the Euro area, i.e., ten countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and three Western EU members. The analysis is based on a FAVAR model with two blocks which exploits a large cross-country...

Between 1995 and 2005, the German economy has experienced a phase of weak economic growth. We analyze whether this weak growth performance can be attributed to the stance of monetary conditions during that period. We show that the real effective exchange rate did have almost no dampening effects...

This paper studies the relative performance of alternative monetary policy rules in the presence of oil price shocks in a small open economy optimizing model. Our analysis shows that it is important to distinguish between alternative price indices (CPI, core CPI, and GDP deflator) when modeling...