The ongoing policy strategy review presents a unique opportunity for the ECB to examine how to best employ its immense power to fulfil its mandate. Two challenges require urgent attention. First, the “lowflation” problem – the outcome of overly tight policies that allowed inflation to...

What institutional arrangements for an independent central bank with a price stability mandate promote good policy outcomes when unconventional policies become necessary? Unconventional monetary policy poses challenges. The large scale asset purchases needed to counteract the zero lower bound on...

In recent years, activist monetary policy rules responding to inflation and the level of economic activity have been advanced as a means of achieving effective output stabilization without inflation. Advocates of such policies suggest that their flexibility may yield substantial stabilization...