This paper examines the policy rate recommendations of the Bank of Canada's Governing Council (GC) and the C.D. Howe Institute's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) since 2003. We find, first, that differences in the median recommendations between the MPC and the GC are persistent but small (i.e., 25...

A common finding in the literature is that forward guidance cannot be credible under discretionary policy as long as the zero lower bound is an one-off event. However, this is not the case when recurring episodes of zero interest rates are possible. In this paper, we contribute to this new...

The decision-making process in the ECB's Governing Council remains opaque as the ECB, in contrast to many other central banks, does not publish the votes for or against a policy proposal. In this paper, we construct an index of dissent based on the ECB presidents' answers to journalists'...

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) are shadowed by professionals and academic economists who provide a separate policy rate recommendation in advance of the central bank's announcement. We explore differences between shadow and actual committee decisions based on an...

Household heterogeneity has been shown to be an important driver of aggregate demand. In this research, we demonstrate that it also impacts the supply side. We build a model in which heterogeneous households vary in their extent to which they supply production factors (labor and capital). Our...

Employing unique representative survey data from New Zealand collected in 2016, we study public knowledge about and attitude towards a specific monetary policy institution, the Policy Target Agreement (PTA). The PTA contains the inflation target for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ). First,...

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoins may revolutionize the financial system by at least partially replacing intermediaries such as central banks and commercial banks. The blockchain technology enables users to transact on a peer-to-peer basis. This imposes a serious threat on the financial...

Der Prozess der Digitalisierung führt zunehmend zu einer Verdrängung der Nachfrage nach Bargeld und zu einer Privatisierung des Zahlungsverkehrs. Eine in jüngerer Zeit viel diskutierte Antwort der Zentralbanken ist das digitale Zentralbankgeld (Konto für Jedermann bei der Zentralbank)....

Nach dem Versuch unzahliger Kryptowährungen das Finanzwesen zu revolutionieren und den ersten Schritten nationaler Notenbanken in Richtung einer Digitalisierung des Geldwesens, folgen nun privatwirtschaftliche Großprojekte. Das maßgeblich von Facebook vorangetriebene Libra will den Zugang zu...

Private cryptocurrencies allow for payments without the need for a financial institution. These institutions, the central bank and retail banks, may thus observe a decline in the demand for their payments systems, i.e. cash and deposits. Using the monetary search model of Lagos and Wright...