Search Results
Report
Establishing credibility: evolving perceptions of the European Central Bank
The perceptions of a central bank's inflation aversion may reflect institutional structure or, more dynamically, the history of its policy decisions. In this paper, we present a novel empirical framework that uses high-frequency data to test for persistent variation in market perceptions of central bank inflation aversion. The first years of the European Central Bank (ECB) provide a natural experiment for this model. Tests of the effect of news announcements on the slope of yield curves in the euro area and on the euro-dollar exchange rate suggest that the market's perception of the policy ...
Journal Article
Sterilized fx
Journal Article
Legal structure, financial structure, and the monetary policy transmission mechanism
Among the many challenges facing the new Eurosystem - the European Central Bank and the central banks of the eleven members of the European Monetary Union - is the possibility that participating countries will respond differently to interest rate changes. This paper provides evidence that differences in financial structure are the proximate cause for these national asymmetries in monetary policy transmission and that these differences in financial structure are a result of differences in legal structure. The author concludes that unless legal structures are harmonized across Europe, the ...
Journal Article
The European Central Bank and the Eurosystem
The Eurosystem comprises the European Central Bank at its center as well as the national central banks of the twelve countries currently participating in monetary union. The European Central Bank was established in July 1998, six months before the beginning of Stage Three of economic and monetary union. Although decisions regarding monetary policy are made centrally by the Governing Council of the Eurosystem, the operational aspects of monetary policy-including open market operations, administration of the minimum reserve system, and management of the standing facilities-are undertaken in a ...
Report
The measurement and behavior of uncertainty: evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters
We use matched point and density forecasts of output growth and inflation from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters to derive measures of forecast uncertainty, forecast dispersion, and forecast accuracy. We construct uncertainty measures from aggregate density functions as well as from individual histograms. The uncertainty measures display countercyclical behavior, and there is evidence of increased uncertainty for output growth and inflation since 2007. The results also indicate that uncertainty displays a very weak relationship with forecast dispersion, corroborating the findings of ...
Journal Article
Decision time for European Monetary Union
If the plans of European governments for economic and monetary union by the end of the decade are realized, a new common currency called the euro will be in use in at least a few western European countries within five years. Even earlier, starting in 1999, a new European Central Bank is slated to take control of monetary policy in the initial member countries. ; This article examines the economic and political factors that will determine whether monetary union proceeds on schedule and, if so, which countries are likely to be initial members. There is little chance that most of the countries ...
Journal Article
EMU and the ECB
Working Paper
Regional influences on U.S. monetary policy: some implications for Europe
This paper looks at the monetary policy decisions of the U.S. Federal Reserve and asks whether those decisions have been influenced solely by national concerns, or whether regional factors have played a role. All of the Federal Reserve's policymakers have some regional identity, i.e., either their positions explicitly carry some regional affiliation or their region of origin is a factor that must be considered in the selection process. This research is relevant for the Fed, and it may also be relevant for Europe's fledgling central bank in Frankfurt. Critics have asserted that ECB ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy implementation: common goals but different practices
While the goals that guide monetary policy in different countries are very similar, central banks diverge in their methods of implementing policy. This study of the policy frameworks of four central banks?the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Swiss National Bank?focuses on two notable areas of difference. The first is the choice of an interest rate target, a standard feature of conventional monetary policy. The second is the choice of instruments for managing the central banks? expanded balance sheets?a decision made necessary by the banks? ...