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...

Using a randomized controlled trial, we study whether showing German respondents a graph plotting the European Central Bank's inflation target alongside inflation in the euro area from 1999 to 2017 affects respondents' trust in the ECB. The treatment has, on average, no significant effect on the...

Policy counterfactuals based on estimated structural VARs routinely suggest that bringing Alan Greenspan back in the 1970s' United States would not have prevented the Great Inflation. We show that a standard policy counterfactual suggests that the Bundesbank - which is near-universally credited...

In this paper, we analyse the effects of objective and subjective knowledge about monetary policy, as well as the information search patterns, of German citizens on trust in the ECB. We rely on a unique representative public opinion survey of German households conducted in 2011. We find that...

This paper provides a novel analysis of quantitative easing (QE) that focuses on its implicit fiscal dimension. The first segment examines the theory of the liquidity trap and introduces a distinction between a "weak" and "strong" liquidity trap. The second segment analyzes the impact of QE...

This paper investigates Germany's vulnerability to the ongoing Euroland crisis. In 2010-11, Germany experienced a strong rebound from the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The Euroland crisis then meant record low interest rates and a depressed euro that boosted German extra-area exports. But...

This paper outlines a new method for using qualitative information to analyze the monetary policy strategy of central banks. Quantitative assessment indicators that are extracted from a central bank's public statements via the balance statistic approach are employed to estimate a Taylor-type...

In this paper, we analyse the effects of objective and subjective knowledge about monetary policy, as well as the information search patterns, of German citizens on trust in the ECB. We rely on a unique representative public opinion survey of German households conducted in 2011. We find that...