The paper discusses key elements of optimal central bank design and applies its findings to the Eurosystem. A particular focus is on the size of monetary policy committees, the degree of centralization, and the representation of relative economic size in the voting rights of regional (or...

This paper puts forward a characterization of the structural features of the economic system relevant to the monetary-policy decisions of the European Central Bank. The econometric analysis adopts a parsimonious VAR representation of three key macroeconomic variables (interest rates, prices and...