This monthly monetary model for the euro area is gradually constructed from its two constituting components: a money demand and a loan demand model which both include the relation between the respective retail bank rates and the short-term market interest rate. Eventually, the encompassing...

We derive fundamental new theory for measuring monetary service flows aggregated over countries within the European Monetary Union (EMU). We develop three increasingly restrictive approaches: (1) the heterogeneous agents approach, (2) the multilateral representative agent approach, and (3) the...

The notable increase in international reserve holdings over the past decade and their use during the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 has sparked renewed interest in the analysis of the optimal level of reserve holdings, in particular in countries which are subject to sudden stops. Less...

This paper derives a general framework for collateral risk control determination in repurchase transactions or repos. The objective is to treat consistently heterogeneous collateral so that the collateral taker has a similar risk exposure whatever the collateral pledged. The framework measures...

This paper reviews the key economic issues concerning the welfare costs of inflation and deflation, with a view to shedding light on the desirable properties of the inflation process. Our review of the evidence on the overall costs of inflation and deflation indicates that such costs could be...

Based on a literature review, this paper investigates the reasons why broad money demand has usually been found to be more stable in the euro area than in other large economies. The paper concludes that there are three main explanations for this fact. First, in some countries outside the euro...

This paper re-examines two data issues concerning euro area money demand: aggregation of national data and measurement of the own rate.The main purpose is to study if euro area money demand is subject to parameter non-constancies using formal tests rather than informal diagnostics. As a...

This paper analyses the information content of M1 for euro area real GDP since the beginning of the 1980s and reviews theoretical arguments on why real narrow money should help predict real GDP. We find that, unlike in the U.S., in the euro area, M1 has better and more robust forecasting...

The role of money in society has been a controversial topic in economic theory over many years. Particular attention has been devoted to the analysis whether there should be competition in the supply of money, or whether this is best left to a governmental agency. This paper reviews the...

After the switch to a floating exchange rate in 1973, the Swiss National Bank at first adopted annual monetary targets and in the 1990s shifted to a medium-term targeting strategy. In this paper I review the SNBu0092s internal policy analysis, an aspect of Swiss monetary targeting that has...