New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen...

Consumers are using cash less and less, and the use of private money, through companies such as Visa, Mastercard or Paypal, is increasing considerably. On the one hand, cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, were created in 2008, and on the other hand, private digital currencies backed by large...

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag liefert einen Uberblick über die Bedeutung asymmetrischer makroökonomischer Strukturen in den EWU Mitgliedsländern für die einheitliche Geldpolitik. Zunächst wird im Rahmen eines Modells illustriert, welche grundsätzliche Bedeutung asymmetrischen...

This paper investigates the performance of optimised interest rate rules when there is uncertainty about a key determinant of the monetary transmission mechanism, namely the degree of persistence characterising the inflation process. The paper focuses on the euro area and utilises two variants of...

Announcing a quantitative objective for price developments has become a common practice in modern monetary policy making. While the specific features of such announced objectives vary across countries, a common rationale for this is to help anchoring inflation expectations. We use survey data on...

We revisit recent evidence on how monetary policy affects output and prices in the U.S. and in the euro area. The response patterns to a shift in monetary policy are similar in most respects, but differ noticeably as to the composition of output changes. In the euro area investment is the...