On November 8, 2013, several members of the British House of Lords' Subcommittee A conducted a hearing at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, on "Genuine Economic and Monetary Union and its Implications for the UK". Professors Otmar Issing and Jan Pieter Krahnen were called as expert witnesses. The...

Historically Central Bank Independence (CBI) was anything but the norm. CBI seems to contradict core principles of democracy. Most economists were also against CBI. After the Great Inflation of the 1970ies many empirical studies demonstrated that there is a strong negative correlation between...

Introduction -- From ignorance to triumph -- A short terminology -- Communication: practice and theory -- Communication and effectiveness of monetary policy -- Communication and accountability -- Communication and transparency -- Concluding remarks.

In global financial centers, short-term market rates are effectively determined in the pledged collateral market, where banks and other financial institutions exchange collateral (such as bonds and equities) for money. Furthermore, the use of long-dated securities as collateral for short...

This paper outlines important lessons for monetary policy. In particular, the role of inflation targeting, which was much acclaimed prior to the financial crisis and since then has not lost much of its endorsement, is critically reviewed. Ignoring the relation between monetary policy and asset...