Long-run inflation expectations should not respond to economic news if the central bank is seen as credibly committed to stabilising inflation. In this paper we find that since the onset of the global financial crisis, medium and long-term inflation expectations implied by inflation swaps in the...

How do monetary policy committee (MPC) members form their views about the appropriate interest rate? To what extent do they change their minds during the deliberations in the interest rate meeting? How important is the Chairman? The theoretical literature makes assumptions about these issues. We...

JEL Classification: C22, E52

This Paper uses annual data spanning 1870 to 1930 on a set of variables correlated with business conditions to construct an index of real economic activity in Switzerland. We extract an estimate of the common component of the data series using principal components analysis and the unobservable...

This paper models the role of the Chairman in the decision making of individualistic and autocratically collegial monetary policy committees, assuming that uncertainty about the optimal interest rate causes policymakers’ views to differ and that they are unable to communicate their opinions...

Monetary policy is typically formulated with a very short-term interest rate, while longer rates matter in the transmission mechanism. We show that financial market shocks impact less on the macroeconomy if policy is set with a longer rate.

During the financial crisis of 2007/08 the level and volatility of interest rate spreads increased dramatically. This paper examines how the choice of the target interest rate for monetary policy affects the volatility of inflation, the output gap and the yield curve. We consider three monetary...