This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the use of the Eurosystem’s monetary policy instruments and the operational framework from the first quarter of 2009 until the second quarter 2012. The paper discusses in detail, from a liquidity management perspective, the standard and...

Eleven European countries adopted the Euro as their single national currency in 1999, and others have followed suit to form a 19-member single-currency bloc by 2015. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain were the founding...

This paper reviews the key economic issues concerning the welfare costs of inflation and deflation, with a view to shedding light on the desirable properties of the inflation process. Our review of the evidence on the overall costs of inflation and deflation indicates that such costs could be...

In the last decade, advanced economies, including the euro area, experienced deflationary pressures caused by the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the anti-crisis policies that followed - in particular, the new financial regulations (which led to a deep decline in the money multiplier)....

We analyze the relationship between M3 growth and inflation within an error correction framework including also the output gap, the 3-mo EURIBOR, and the 10-yr government bond yield. We find robust cointegration between money growth and inflation. Shocks in M3 growth account for up to 30% of the...

The introduction of the euro notes and coins in the first two months of 2002 was followed by a lively debate on the alleged inflationary effects of the new currency. In Italy, as in the rest of the euro area, survey-based measures signaled a much sharper rise in inflation than measured by the...

In this paper we present three empirically testable versions of the common p-star model and evaluate their forecasting performance using conventional techniques. We try to answer the question if the p-star approach is preferable to achieve a reliable short-run inflation forecast and with regard...

This paper investigates possible non-linearities in the dynamics of the euro area demand for the narrow aggregate M1. A long-run money demand relationship is firstly estimated over a sample period covering the last three decades. While the parameters of the relationship are jointly stable, there...

In this paper we present an empirically stable money demand model for Euro area M3. We show that housing wealth is an important explanatory variable of long-run money demand that captures the trending behaviour of M3 velocity, in particular its shift in the first half of this decade. We show...

This paper examines the forecasting performance of a broad monetary aggregate (M3) in predicting euro area inflation. Excess liquidity is measured as the difference between the actual money stock and its fundamental value, the latter determined by a money demand function. The out-of sample...