The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

This paper analyzes the operation of the Eurosystem�s public and private assets purchases programmes for monetary policy purposes, quantifying the potential effect on the Italian economy. First we give an exhaustive account of the main transmission channels by which the purchases can be...

We explain why the macroeconomic effects of shocks to inflation of the same size, but opposite sign, are not necessarily symmetric. All in all, the costs of deflation and disinflation tend to exceed those of inflation due to the presence of constraints in the economy, namely the zero lower bound...

The strong and prolonged deviation of money growth from its reference value since 2001 has caused concern among policy-makers about the upside risks to price stability from monetary developments. In this article we provide evidence that these risks might have been smaller until 2005 than...

We analyse a simplified New-Keynesian model with an unobserved aggregate cost-push shock in which firms and the central bank have different information about the shock. We consider a linear policy rule where a pure inflation targeting central bank decides how much to react to the shock given its...

The paper analyzes developments in TARGET2 imbalances within the euro area since 2007, from two perspectives: national central banks� balance sheets and countries� balance of payments (BoP). We examine the relationship between TARGET2 balances and the Eurosystem liquidity provision,...