Major differences between national financial systems might make a common monetary policy difficult. As within Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom differ most with respect to their financial systems, the present paper addresses its topic under the assumption that the United Kingdom is already...

This paper studies ECB and Bundesbank communication on monetary policy during the first years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We study whether statements by different (groups of) central bankers have been contradictory and whether differences have diminished over time. We find that...

Forward-looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority leads least squares estimates to understate the true growth consequences of monetary policy interventions. We present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on real output growth for several European...

This paper studies monetary and fiscal policies in the euro area. It discusses the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. As to policy competition, the focus is on competition between the European central bank, the German government, and the French government. As...

This paper compares the ECB's conduct of monetary policy with that of the Bundesbank. Estimated monetary policy reaction functions for the Bundesbank (1979:4-1998:12) and the European Central Bank (1999:1-2004:5) show that, while the ECB and the Bundesbank react similarly to expected inflation,...

Die Bundesregierung beabsichtigt, der Deutschen Bundesbank eine neue Struktur zu geben. Die bislang im Leitungsgremium vertretenen Landeszentralbankpräsidenten sollen entfallen und der neue Vorstand von der Bundesregierung ernannt werden. Der Bundesrat hat diese Vorschläge zurückgewiesen....

In 2004, Germany became Europe’s ‘king of debt’ in absolute figures, thereby leaving behind even Italy, for decades the bearer of this awkward title. However, Germany’s rising public debt is not due to loose fiscal policy but the result of the common monetary policy in European Monetary...

The paper discusses global current account imbalances in the context of an asymmetric world monetary system and asymmetric current account developments. It identifies the US and Germany as center countries with rising / high current account deficits (US) and surpluses (Germany). These are...