The need for structural reforms in the euro area has often been advocated. These reforms would improve the welfare of euro area citizens and also, as a welcome side-effect, facilitate the conduct of monetary policy. Against this background, a particularly relevant question that can be posed is...

External statistics – specifically balance of payments and international investment position statistics – are among the primary statistics on which policy-making bodies and markets rely as a basis for their decisions in globalised economies. Monitoring and enhancing data quality in the...

With the realisation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), there will be no difference in the euro area between national and cross-border retail payments. SEPA is aimed at fostering competition and innovation, and improving conditions for customers. This requires concerted efforts from...

The extended period of limited growth experienced until recently in many European countries raises the issue as to which policies could be most effective in improving their economic performance. This paper argues that further financial sector reforms may be a valuable complement to ongoing...

The preparations for the introduction of the euro in 1999 involved the need for a new set of statistics for the euro area. Since then, significant progress has been made with regard to the coverage, timeliness and accuracy of these statistics. The reliability of the first releases – i.e. their...

Monetary growth has increased significantly in the euro area in recent years, raising concerns about the risks to price stability. Viewed from a sectoral perspective, this increase reflects to a large extent the deposit holdings of other financial intermediaries (OFIs). This paper presents...

The ECB’s monetary policy has received considerable attention in recent years. This is less the case, however, for its regular monetary policy preparation and decision-making process. This paper reviews how the factors usually considered as critical for the success of a central banking system...

The study considers three broad categories of financial integration measures: (i) price-based, which capture discrepancies in asset prices across different national mar kets; (ii) news-based, which analyse the impact that common factors have on the return process of an asset; (iii)...

Current best practice in central banking views a high level of monetary policy predictability as desirable. A clear distinction, however, has to be made between short-term and longer-term predictability. While short-term predictability can be narrowly defined as the ability of the public to...