This paper proposes that an important instrument of monetary policy of the Bundesbank, is how it communicates with the public. We argue that communication by senior central bank officials represents an instrument of monetary policy that complements changes in interest rates. Moreover, the...

Previous studies show the Fed has a forecast advantage over the private sector, either because it devotes more resources to forecasting or because it has an informational advantage in knowing the path of future monetary policy. We evaluate the Fed’s forecast advantage to determine how much of...

This paper seeks, through the estimation of central bank reaction functions for 19 OECD countries in a panel setting, to examine the relationship between certain key target variables and an instrument of monetary policy, namely short-term interest rates. A rolling, reduced form, vector...

We evaluate how the euro area economy would have performed since mid-2021 under alternative monetary policy strategies. We use the ECB's workhorse estimated DSGE model and contrast actual policy conduct against alternative strategies which differ in their "lower-for-longer" commitment as well as...

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...

The pending enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has brought to the fore the discussion of the voting right distribution in the European Central Bank (ECB) council. We show that, in a model where labor unions internalize the inflationary consequences of wage setting, deviating from a...

Soon, euro area membership could more than double, with the vast majority of accession countries being quite different in economic terms compared with current members. Under the current decision-making system, this can lead to high decisionmaking costs and there is a risk that monetary policy...

The monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) is the subject matter of this paper. We analyze the prospects for future price stability in an enlarged European Monetary and Economic Union (EMU). At the heart of this study are the potential e®ects of altering decision-making procedure...

The literature on the behavior of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has focused on static voting patterns. We find statistical support for a dynamic pattern using a panel reaction function to analyze MPC votes over the 1997-2008 period. We find that internal and external...

A motivation for central bank independence (CBI) is that policy delegation helps politicians manage diverse coalitions. This paper develops a model of coalition formation that predicts when delegation will occur. An analysis of policy preferences survey data and CBI indicators supports the...