During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s the Bundesbank established an outstanding reputation in the world of central banking. Germany achieved a high degree of domestic stability and provided safe haven for investors in times of turmoil in the international financial system. Eventually 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...

The paper discusses global imbalances under the aspect of an asymmetric world monetary system. It identifies the US and Germany as center countries with rising / high current account deficits (US) and surpluses (Germany). These are matched by current account surpluses of countries stabilizing...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether fiscal policies can alleviate the effects of the zero lower bound (ZLB) on interest rates and if they should be coordinated internationally. The analysis is carried out using EAGLE, a DSGE model of the global economy. We consider that the fiscal...

This paper analyzes the factors underlying the weakness of the euro. For this purpose, the framework advocated by Clarida and Gali (1994) is used. Within this model, three structural shocks drive the dynamics of the endogenous variables: aggregate supply shocks, aggregate spending shocks, and...

Using business survey data on German manufacturing firms, this paper provides tests for hypotheses formulated in capital market imperfection theories that predict distributional effects in the transmission of monetary policy. The business conditions of small firms are found to be somewhat more...

We analyze the role of forward-looking indicators, like the IFO business climate indicator and asset prices, in German monetary transmission. We show that the use of both the IFO indicator and asset prices improves the performance and interpretation of a Vector AutoRegression (VAR) model of...

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...