This paper first shows that the forecast error incurred when assuming that future inflation will be equal to the inflation target announced by the central bank is typically at least as small and often smaller than forecast errors of model-based and published inflation forecasts. It then shows...

Announcing a quantitative objective for price developments has become a common practice in modern monetary policy making. While the specific features of such announced objectives vary across countries, a common rationale for this is to help anchoring inflation expectations. We use survey data on...

I propose a new term structure model for euro area real and nominal interest rates which explicitly incorporates a time-varying lower bound for nominal interest rates. Results suggest that the lower bound is of importance in structural analyses implying time-varying impulse responses of yield...

This paper investigates the impact of ECB communication of its assessment of the economic outlook on ex-ante inflation uncertainty and sheds light on how central bank information shocks operate. The paper finds that ECB communication of new outlook information not only reduces professional...

We investigate whether the response of the macro-economy to oil price shocks undergoes episodic changes. Employing a regime-switching vector autoregressive model we identify two regimes that are characterized by qualitatively different patterns in economic activity and inflation following oil...

We analyze the degree of anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area during the post-crisis period, with a focus on the time span from 2014 onwards when long-term beliefs have substantially drifted away from the policy target. Using a new estimation technique, we look at tail...

This paper analyses the distribution of long-term inflation expectations in the euro area using individual density forecasts from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. We exploit the panel dimension in this dataset to examine whether this distribution became less stable following the Great...

The long-run relationship between money and prices in the euro area embedded in traditional money demand models with income and interest rates broke down after 2001. We develop an money demand model where investors hold a diversified portfolio with money, domestic and foreign stocks and...

We study the convergence of European bond markets and the anchoring of inflation expectations in euro area countries using high-frequency bond yield data for France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We find that Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has led to substantial convergence in euro area sovereign...