Most meetings of the Governing Council of the ECB take place intra muros at the ECB's premises in Frankfurt. Some meetings, however, are held extra muros, i.e. outside Frankfurt, hosted by one of the national central banks. This paper uses high-frequency surprises from meeting days to show that...

We study the impact of rotating votes in the ECB Governing Council after EMU enlargement, based on national and euro-wide Taylor rules and on a convergence assumption. We find that the rotation system yields monetary policy decisions that are close both to full centralization and to a voting...

The ECB's monetary policy has received considerable attention in recent years. This is less the case, however, for its regular monetary policy preparation and decision-making process. This paper reviews how the factors usually considered as critical for the success of a central banking system...