How large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs affect financial markets is an important question for policy makers that face the zero lower bound. While so-called “stock effects”–that is, persistent shifts in asset prices observed as the result of an LSAP program–are relatively well...

We show that growth and unemployment forecasts submitted by individual FOMC members do not exhibit herding behavior, while the inflation forecasts show strong evidence of anti-herding. Interestingly, anti-herding is more important for non-voting members than for voters.

We analyze the influence of US monetary policy on commodity price volatility. Expected target rate changes and communications decrease volatility, whereas target rate surprises and unorthodox measures increase it. The “calming” effect of communication is reduced during the financial crisis.

We evaluate survey-based wage-growth expectations and find that they are neither unbiased nor efficient forecasts. Concerning out-of-sample forecast precision, survey participants generally perform worse than a constant forecast. Caution should accordingly be exercised when relying on these data...

Monetary policy may constitute a short-term explanation of the non-linearity in the relationship between oil prices and output. The role of oil prices in the ECB reaction is thus investigated with an extended Taylor rule including several oil prices indicators.

In this note, we quantify the deterioration of achievable stabilization outcomes when monetary policy operates under imperfect credibility and weak anchoring of long-term expectations. Within a medium-scale Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, we introduce, through a simple...

I determine expected long-run inflation in a two-state New Keynesian model driven by natural interest-rate uncertainty. Monetary policy switches between discretion in ‘normal times’ and zero-lower-bound episodes when it is passive. Long-run US inflation ranges from −1.8% to +1.2% p.a.

The recent financial crisis has been characterized by unprecedented monetary policy interventions of central banks with the intention to stabilize financial markets and the real economy. This paper sheds light on the actual impact of monetary policy on stock liquidity and thereby addresses its...

With the numerous monetary policy reforms undertaken during the 1990s, inflation targeting emerged as one of the possible solutions. The macroeconomic performance of this regime has attracted the attention of recent research, yet no final consensus on its role is reached. The aim of this paper...

Traditionally, the task of monetary management is usually performed by the monetary authority on behalf of government. However, a key challenge in monetary management is how to deal with uncertainty. Thus, the relevant policy questions must include how best the available instruments of monetary...