We study the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986-2006, using single-country VARs and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries depending on their financial...

Recently, the Bank of Japan outlined a two perspectives approach to the conduct of monetary policy that focuses on risks to price stability over different time horizons. Interpreting this as pertaining to different frequency bands, we use band spectrum regression to study the determination of...

I estimate a reaction function for the ECB using an ordered logit model for the period 1999-2009. Allowing for a smooth transition from one set of parameters to another, I detect a rapid change in middle of 2008.

We investigate the impact of EMU on macroeconomic volatility. The volatilities of inflation and nominal interest rates have declined, as has, more importantly, the volatility of real consumption growth. Since global volatility has fallen for reasons unrelated to EMU (the “great...

This paper estimates a monetary policy reaction function for the ECB over the period 1999-2009. To allow for a potential shift in interest rate setting during the financial crisis, we permit a smooth transition from one set of parameters to another. The estimates show a swift change in the...

I estimate a reaction function for the ECB using an ordered logit model for the period 1999-2009. Allowing for a smooth transition from one set of parameters to another, I detect a rapid change in the middle of 2008.

We study ECB’s interest rate setting in 1999-2010 using a reaction function in which forecasts of future economic growth and inflation enter as regressors. Allowing for a gradual switch between two reaction functions, we detect a shift after Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008 when the...

"Following the financial crisis, many have argued that monetary policy should lean against asset price increases and that deviations of credit and asset prices from trend can be used to capture financial imbalances. We study quarterly data spanning 1986-2008 for a sample of 18 countries and...

Following the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, a number of Asian central banks adopted inflation targeting. We explore how successful this framework has been by looking at the persistence of inflation, as measured by the sum of the coefficients in an autoregressive model for inflation, using a...

At the upcoming G20 meetings the issue what can be done to avoid a repetition of the current deep financialcrisis will again be debated. Much attention and criticism will be directed to central banks. That is unavoidable: central banks must never again permit the development of financial...