This paper deals with the usefulness of several measures of financial spreads (the slope of the yield curve, the reverse yield gap, the credit quality spread) for fore-casting real economic activity and inflation in the euro area. A quarterly Bayesian vector autoregression model is used to...

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

This paper studies how changes in the federal funds rate by the US Federal Reserve affect the eurozone economy. In our analysis, the international transmission mechanism works through movements in the exchange rate, commodity prices, short-term interest rates and the trade balance. We find that...

The strong and prolonged deviation of money growth from its reference value since 2001 has caused concern among policy-makers about the upside risks to price stability from monetary developments. In this paper we provide evidence that these risks might be smaller than previously assumed. We...