Employing dynamic panel estimation techniques we derive an empirical measure of central banks' degree of output sensitivity. When relating this measure to macroeconomic outcome variables, we find that a decrease in output sensitivity results in larger business-cycle movements and higher...

We investigate whether the ECB aligns its monetary policy with financial crisis risk in EMU member countries. We find that since the outbreak of the subprime crisis the ECB has significantly increased net lending and reduced interest rates when banking and sovereign debt crisis risk in...

Abstract In mid-2013 the macroeconomic situation in European crisis economies started to show signs of recovery. In the political debate, improving economic conditions were often attributed to recently enacted structural reforms. In this paper, we use empirical business cycle models to...

Based on an extended version of a time-inconsistency model of monetary policy we show that the degree of effective monetary policy conservatism can be uncovered by studying to what extent central banks react to real disturbances. By estimating central bank reaction functions in moving and...