Bulgaria has for years been facing some of the highest credit growth rates and current account deficits in Central and South-Eastern Europe, raising concerns about possible risks for macroeconomic and financial sector stability. Since standard monetary policy instruments are not available within...

This is a survey on the recent game theoretic literature on committee decision making. We consider theoretical work on the role of (i) strategic voting, (ii) costly information acquisition, (iii) conflicting interests, and (iv) communication in committees. Moreover, we review recent experimental...

The ECB Working Paper Series seeks to disseminate economic research on issues that are relevant to the various tasks and functions of the ECB. The Series invites submissions of research work by ECB staff and visitors. Papers by researchers not affiliated with the ECB may also be considered for...

Inflation expectations constitute a subject of particular contemporary interest to central banks, especially those pursuing a monetary policy based on a strategy of direct inflation targeting. Macroeconomic theory indicates that the transmission of monetary policy impulses and their impact on...

This paper examines the feasibility of implementing Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) Control in structural cointegrated VAR models and sheds some light on the two major problems generated by such implementation. The first aspect to be taken into account is the effect of the presence of unit roots...

A two-country sticky-price model is used to analyse the interactions between fiscal and monetary policy. The role of an u0091activistu0092 fiscal policy as a stabilisation tool is considered and a measure of the welfare gains from international fiscal policy cooperation is derived. It is found...

This paper investigates the performance of optimised interest rate rules when there is uncertainty about a key determinant of the monetary transmission mechanism, namely the degree of persistence characterising the inflation process. The paper focuses on the euro area and utilises two variants of...