Jean-Claude Trichet deserves praise for fighting inflation and his handling of the financial crisis of 2007-2009. But his legacy is unfinished and we still have to see whether he will be the one who saved the euro. Important challenges remain for the incoming president. First, trust of citizens...

Through Bruegel's role on the Monetary Experts Panel for the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Bruegel scholars contributed to the Committee's Monetary Dialogue with the European Central Bank meeting on 28 September. In this briefing paper for the Panel, Director...

Senior Non-Resident Fellow Jürgen von Hagen offers his recommendations for the proper monetary policy to lead the eurozone out of the crisis. He argues that the tentative recovery in the euro area indicates that both monetary and fiscal policy can be normalised soon. However, because delaying...

Bei der Kritik an den Rating-Agenturen wird häufig missachtet, dass ihre Macht weitgehend politikgemacht ist. Es sind der Staat und die EZB, die über Gesetze und Regulierungen den Ratings eine Multiplikatorwirkung zuschreiben. Dieser Beitrag skizziert anhand der Länder-ratings die...

The breakdown of the interbank money markets in the face of the recent financial crisis has forced central banks and governments to take extraordinary measures to sustain financial stability. In this paper we investigate which influence central bank activity has on interbank markets. In our...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis trust, in the European Central Bank (ECB) has reached an historical low. Taking panel data and using a fixed effects DFGLS estimation for a 12–country sample over the time period 1999 to 2011 with a total of 312 observations, this paper detects a...

The Bank of England, the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have responded to the crisis with exceptional initiatives resulting in a major increase in their balance sheets. After the ECB's end-2011 launch of three-year bank refinancing (LTRO), there has been speculation...