Recent research has shown that optimal monetary policy may display considerable price-level drift. Proponents of price-level targeting have argued that the costs of eliminating the price-level drift may be reduced if the central bank responds flexibly by returning the price level only gradually...

This report discusses the role of the European Union’s full employment objective in the conduct of the ECB’s monetary policy. It first reviews a range of indicators of full employment, highlights the heterogeneity of labour market outcomes within different groups in the population and across...

The ECB’s price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has...

The last review of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy in 2003 followed a period of predominantly upside risks to price stability. Experience following the 2008 financial crisis has focused renewed attention on the question of how monetary and fiscal policy should best interact, in particular...

We characterise optimal discretionary monetary policy responses to cost-push shocks and to financial distress in the presence of model uncertainty. Under robust control, the central bank reacts more aggressively to both types of shocks, and less to the lagged policy rate, than if the true model...

Panel estimates based on 19 transition economies suggests that some central banks may aim at comparatively high inflation rates mainly to make up for, and to perhaps exploit, lagging internal and external liberalization in their economies. Out-of-sample forecasts, based on expected developments...

We use robust control to study how a central bank in an economy with imperfect interest rate pass-through conducts monetary policy if it fears that its model could be misspecified. The effects of the central bank's concern for robustness can be summarised as follows. First, depending on the...