The likely extension of the euro area has triggered a debate on the organization of the ECB, in particular on the apparent mismatch between relative economic size and voting rights in the Council. We present a simple model of optimal representation in a federal central bank addressing this...

This paper studies monetary policy committee transparency (MPCT) based on a new index that measures central bankers' educational and professional backgrounds as disclosed through central bank websites. Based on a novel cross-sectional data set covering 75 central banks, we investigate the...

Yes. Existing studies of the possible role of asset prices in monetary policy implicitly assume that central banks respond to asset price movements in a fully symmetric way. This paper offers a new perspective by allowing for different policy reactions to stock price increases and decreases,...

We consider the political economy of a monetary union wheremember governments attempt to influence the policy of the commoncentral bank. Modeling this as a common agency with incentivecontracts, we show that if incentives are all that matters for the bank,the equilibrium implements a weighted...

This paper presents a small open economy model to analyze the role of central bank liquidity management in implementing “unconventional” monetary policies within an inflation targeting framework. In particular, the paper explicitly models the facilities that the central bank uses to manage...

We develop a comprehensive index of the transparency of central banks regarding their policy framework to promote financial stability for 110 countries from 2000 to 2011 and examine the determinants and effects of this transparency. We find that the degree of transparency increased in the 2000s,...

We examine how the transparency of the European Central Bankś monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the European Union have in this institution. We use nearly half a million individual responses from the European Commissionś Eurobarometer survey from 2000-2011 and...

In closed or open economy models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We analyze this result in the context of developing economies, where a large proportion of households are credit constrained...

We develop a theoretical framework for studying the effects of interaction on the quaJity of decision-making by monetary policy committees. We show that interaction, i.e. increasing one's expertise through an exchange of views, is most likely not to result in interdependent voting...

This paper examines the role of the monetary instrument choice for local equilibrium determinacy under sticky prices and different fiscal policy regimes. Corresponding to Benhabib et al.'s (2001) results for interest rate feedback rules, the money growth rate should not rise by more than one for...