Central bank independence (CBI) refers to the absence of influence of politicians on monetary policy making. Since we wrote our first surveys of the literature on central bank independence (Eijffinger and de Haan, 1996 and Berger et al., 2001), a lot has changed. The level of CBI has increased...

This article examines the EU-law challenges arising from the use of artificial intelligence for payment initiation and execution ("Payment Agents") under European Union law. It focuses on Payment Agents that support purchasing workflows and are capable of initiating payments in both...

Under the overwhelming evidence of numerous empirical studies that found a negative correlation between the degree of independence and the level of inflation, many governments granted their national central banks independent status around 1990. With low inflation rates in the subsequent period -...

German government debt is considered a safe asset in times of turbulence. We estimate the impact of changes in the risk appetite of global investors on weekly investment fund flows into the German sovereign bond market. Our key contribution is to allow the impact of such shocks to depend on the...

This paper studies the response of inflation expectations to an exogenous shift in central bank preferences. We use the unexpected announcement of the resignation of Jens Weidmann, the president of the Deutsche Bundesbank, in 2021 as a natural experiment constituting a rare case of an exogenous...

During the last decades, central bank independence proved to be the bedrock of credible and effective monetary policy. Both past and recent history provides plenty of evidence of disastrous outcomes with high inflation and economic stagnation, when central banks - lacking independence - were put...

The Euro Area experienced historically high inflation in 2022, with energy prices playing a central role. This paper examines the joint impact of various energy price shocks on inflation in the Euro Area, with a focus on the period encompassing the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war....

In einem Impulspapier weist der wissenschaftliche Beraterkreis des Bundeswirtschaftsministeriums auf die Notwendigkeit entschlossener Reformen des Rentensystems hin, damit die Rente finanzierbar bleibt. Die Reformvorschläge reichen von der Kopplung des Renteneintrittsalters an die fernere...

Der wissenschaftliche Beraterkreis der Bundesministerin für Wirtschaft und Energie hat ein Kurzgutachten zu den Auswirkungen der Lage im Nahen Osten vorgelegt. Ausgehend von ersten Analysen zu den kurzfristigen Effekten auf Lieferketten und Energiepreise, bezieht der Beraterkreis dabei auch...

In einem Gutachten zeigt der Beraterkreis fünf zentrale Handlungsfelder auf, die für eine zukunftsfähige Wachstumsstrategie relevant sind: 1. Innovation und Strukturwandel müssten zugelassen werden, 2. staatliche Investitionen seien strategischer auszurichten, 3. Deregulierung sei...