The first part of this paper outlines the concept of democratic accountability of central banks, and compares the legal accountability of the ECB with some other central banks (Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System). In the second part, we present a theory...

Recent debate on the effectiveness of tax rebates has concentrated on the degree to which they can affect economic activity, which depends on the methodology, the state of the economy, and the underlying assumptions. A better approach to assess the effectiveness of these monetary transfers is by...

There has been a remarkable rise in the transparency of monetary policy during the last two decades. This paper provides an overview of the ways in which central banks have been providing more information about their monetary policymaking. Furthermore, it reviews the theoretical literature on...

Two developments are currently shaping Europe's financial and foreign exchange markets: Innovations, including the private use of the ECU, and the erratic fluctuations of the US dollar. Professor Nydegger analyses the causes and effects of these developments from the perspective of the world...

This paper studies the design, effects and interactions of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro-area and between the euro-area and the non euro-area. To do so, a stylized three-country model of monetary and fiscal policy rules is constructed. It is analyzed how monetary and fiscal rules...

When examined for the period 1985-1992 as a whole, the impact of changes in the targeted Fed funds rate on U.S. treasury bill rates has been weaker than during previous periods. The period, however, should be viewed as three separate regimes. First, I show significant differences between the...