The Eurosystem staff forecasts are conditional on the financial markets, the global economy and fiscal policy outlook, and include expert judgement. We develop a multi-country BVAR for the four largest countries of the euro area and we show that it provides accurate conditional forecasts of...

There is much discussion about derivatives at central banks. The main focus is on questions about the impact of the growing use of derivative instruments on the stability of the financial markets and the effectiveness ofmonetary policy measures. Irrespective ofthe answers, the information...