Negative interest rates remain a controversial policy for central banks. We study a novel signalling channel and ask under what conditions negative rates should exist in an optimal policymaker’s toolkit. We prove two necessary conditions for the optimality of negative rates: a time-consistent...

This paper assesses the importance of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates for the interest-rate channel of monetary policy. We simulate several interest-rate setting policy rules with either high or low inflation targets. We determine the extent to which the zero bound prevents real...

This paper investigates the influence of monetary policy on the optimal behavior of a monopolistic bank. More specifically, we discuss how the overdraft rate and the minimum reserve requirements affect the equilibrium values of lending rate and deposit rate as well as the corresponding...

With the aim of reigniting inflation in the euro area, in early 2015 the ECB embarked on a large-scale asset purchase programme. We analyse the macroeconomic effects of the Asset Purchase Programme via the banking system, exploiting the cross-section of individual bank portfolio decisions. For...

On 4 March 2011, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum and the National Bank of Poland jointly organised a conference on the theme of: "Monetary Policy after the Crisis". Following a call for papers with a large number of submissions, the scientific committee selected 9 papers, which...

In this paper we study the role of the exchange rate in conducting monetary policy in an economy with near-zero nominal interest rates as experienced in Japan since the mid-1990s. Our analysis is based on an estimated model of Japan, the United States and the euro area with rational expectations...

Counter to the credit channel of monetary transmission, monetary policy tightening induces a rise in lending by two different types of non-bank financial institutions (NBFI): shadow banks and investment funds. A monetary DSGE model is able to replicate the empirical facts when augmented with...

This paper estimates the effects of unconventional monetary policies on consumer as well as asset price inflation, economic activity and bank lending at the hand of a VAR analysis, covering episodes of balance sheet policies of 9 countries over the last 20 years. While recent episodes of...

In this paper, we survey the nascent literature on the transmission of negative policy rates. We discuss the theory of how the transmission depends on bank balance sheets, and how this changes once policy rates become negative. We review the growing evidence that negative policy rates are...