Central banks have a variety of tools for implementing monetary policy, but the tool that has received the most attention in the literature has been the overnight interest rate. The financial crisis that erupted in the summer of 2007 has refocused attention on other channels of monetary policy,...

An increasing number of central banks implement monetary policy via two standing facilities: a lending facility and a deposit facility. In this paper we show that it is socially optimal to implement a non-zero interest rate spread. We prove this result in a dynamic general equilibrium model...

An increasing number of central banks implement monetary policy via a channel system or a floor system. We construct a general equilibrium model to study the properties of these systems. We find that the optimal framework is a floor system if and only if the target rate satisfies the Friedman...

Can there be too much trading in financial markets? To address this question, we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model, where agents face idiosyncratic preference and technology shocks. A financial market allows agents to adjust their portfolio of liquid and illiquid assets in response...

In the 1990s, the empirical relation between money demand and interest rates began to fall apart. We analyze to what extent improved access to money markets can explain this break-down. For this purpose, we construct a microfounded monetary model with a money market, which provides insurance...

Die Unterscheidung zwischen gemeinsamen durch die EZB verantworteten geldpolitischen Maßnahmen des Eurosystems und eigenen, nicht-geldpolitischen Operationen der nationalen Notenbanken der Euro-Mitgliedstaaten stellt eine Besonderheit der Europäischen Währungsunion dar. Das jetzt...

Economic theory traditionally suggests that monetary policy can influence the business cycle, but not the long-run potential output. Despite well documented theoretical and empirical consensus on money neutrality in the literature, the role of money as an informational variable for monetary...

Purpose - A major lesson of the EMU crisis is that serious disequilibria in a monetary union result from arrangements not designed to be robust to a variety of shocks. With the specter of this crisis looming substantially and scarring existing monetary zones, the present study has complemented...

We analyze the effects of monetary policy on economic activity in the proposed African monetary unions. Findings broadly show that: (1) but for financial efficiency in the EAMZ, monetary policy variables affect output neither in the short-run nor in the long-term and; (2) with the exception of...

Purpose - While in developed economies, changes in monetary policy affect real economic activity in the short-run but only prices in the long-run, the question of whether these tendencies apply to developing countries remains open to debate. In this paper, we examine the effects of monetary...