A number of contributions to research on monetary policy have suggested that policy should be asymmetric near the lower bound on nominal interest rates. As inflation and economic activity decline, policy should ease more aggressively than it would in the absence of the lower bound. As activity...

This paper analyses the Nairu in the Euro Area and the influence that monetary policy had on its development. Using the Kalman-filter technique we find that the Nairu has varied considerably since the early seventies. The Kalman-filter technique is applied here for the first time using explicit...

Innerhalb einer Währungsunion ist eine souveräne nationale Geldpolitik nicht möglich. Solange die einzelnen Länder sich in verschiedenen ökonomischen Situationen befi nden, wirkt sich auch die gemeinsame Geldpolitik unterschiedlich aus. Sind die Länder zu heterogen, kann die gemeinsame...

I analyze spillover effects from Euro area monetary policy shocks to thirteen EU countries outside the Euro area, i.e., ten countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and three Western EU members. The analysis is based on a FAVAR model with two blocks which exploits a large cross-country...

This paper investigates within a SVAR framework the effects of anticipated monetary policy in the euro area. Building on a procedure recently proposed by Cochrane yielding the response of output to an anticipated monetary policy impulse, we show that in the past twenty years anticipated monetary...

The common currency was created as a result of theoretical considerations regarding the functioning of optimum currency areas. This theory refers to a number of benefits as well as costs. It imposes a number of requirements that are necessary for the newly created structure to be considered...

Against the background of the emergence of macroeconomic imbalances within the European Monetary Union (EMU), we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard...

It is conventionally held that countries are worse off by forming a monetary union when it comes to macroeconomic stabilization. However, this conventional view relies on assuming that monetary policy is conducted optimally. Relaxing the assumption of optimal monetary policy not only uncovers...

The first part of this paper outlines the concept of democratic accountability of central banks, and compares the legal accountability of the ECB with some other central banks (Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System). In the second part, we present a theory...

The present paper uses survey data on expected consumer price developments to analyse the role of inflation expectations in the inflation process. The survey measures of price expectations are derived from the European Commission's Consumer Survey and from the surveys of professional experts...