This paper studies the importance of money for inflation in the euro area. An inflation equation is derived from a small model that combines the supply and demand for money with a Phillips curve and the assumption that inflation expectations develop adaptively. The model's solution attributes an...

In a framework closely related to Diamond and Rajan (2001) we characterize different financial systems and analyze the welfare implications of different LOLR-policies in these financial systems. We show that in a bank-dominated financial system it is less likely that a LOLR-policy that follows...

The first part of this paper outlines the concept of democratic accountability of central banks, and compares the legal accountability of the ECB with some other central banks (Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System). In the second part, we present a theory...

According to most academics and policymakers, transparency in monetary policymaking is desirable. I examine this proposition in a small theoretical model emphasizing forwardlooking private sector behavior. Transparency makes it easier for price setters to infer the central bank's future policy...

Conventional wisdom says that commitment eliminates the inflationary bias of monetary policy. However, this paper shows that the inflation bias can persist even when the central bank commits. A simple model is presented in which the central bank precommits by setting the policy instrument, and...

This paper analyses the implications of cost-push shocks for the optimal choice of monetary policy target in an two-country sticky-price model. In addition to cost-push shocks, each country is subject to labour-supply and money-demand shocks. It is shown that the fully optimal coordinated policy...

We examine optimal and other monetary policies in a linear-quadratic setup with a relatively general form of model uncertainty, so-called Markov jump-linear-quadratic systems extended to include forward-looking variables. The form of model uncertainty our framework encompasses includes : simple...

The paper derives the monetary policy reaction function implied by money growth targeting. It consists of an interest rate response to deviations of the inflation rate from target, to the change in the output gap, to money demand shocks and to the lagged interest rate. In the second part, it is...

We analyse the interaction between private agents? uncertainty about inflation target and the central bank's data uncertainty. In our model, private agents update their perceived inflation target and the central bank estimates unobservable economic shocks as well as the perceived inflation...

The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. In this paper, we explore possible justifications. The case against including money in the central bank's interest rate rule is based on a standard model...