The process by which central banks take decisions has evolved over the years, with a tendency towards independence and decisions taken by committees rather than individuals. Monetary policy committees can be set up formally in different ways, traditionally falling into one of two categories:...

Four major developments have challenged the status quo and reopened the debate on the forms that money will take in the future: 1) use of cash as a medium of exchange has declined; 2) distributed ledger technology (DLT) has led to the emergence of thousands of digital cryptocurrencies; 3) some...

The general macroeconomic situation and weak inflation dynamics justified quantitative easing (QE) in the euro area. Doubts have emerged about its effectiveness as inflation has remained weak. However, we do not know where inflation would have been without QE and the still large slack in the...