The introduction of the Euro has considerably affected the de facto monetary policy autonomy - defined as statistical independence from monetary policy in the key currency areas - in countries outside the European Currency Union. Using a standard open economy framework we argue that de facto...

This paper models the time-varying mean of the UK real and nominal short-term interest rate. Both rates mean revert to a time-varying central tendency in continuous-time interest rate models. Before and during British membership in the ERM, the mean of the real and nominal short rate have a...

We consider a small structural model to describe the transmission mechanism of monetary policy and the dynamics of inflation. We first verify the validity of the general structure estimating it for Germany which represents a sort of benchmark model. At least one of the links required for the...

This paper shows that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy. When the central bank enjoys only limited credibility a pegged exchange rate regime yields a...