On 1 June 2018 the ECB celebrated its 20th anniversary. This paper provides a comprehensive view of the ECB's monetary policy over these two decades. The first section provides a chronological account of the macroeconomic and monetary policy developments in the euro area since the adoption of...

This paper examines whether monetary data releases by the European Central Bank (ECB) have provided markets with additional clues about the future course of its monetary policy. It conducts a novel econometric approach based on a combination of an Ordered Probit model explaining future policy...

This paper examines whether the minutes of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) have provided markets with additional information about the future course of monetary policy. The paper conducts an econometric approach based on an Ordered Probit model explaining future policy rate...

The aim of this paper is to assess whether the findings of Romer and Romer (2000) on the superiority of staff forecasts are still valid today. The paper uses both latest available econometric techniques as well as conventional tests. Several tests for forecast rationality show that a necessary...

This paper examines whether central bank communication stabilises euro area inflation expectations through the information and news channel. A novelty of the study is its use of data from Google Analytics on ECB website traffic as proxy for visitors’ attention to its communication. We conduct...

This paper provides a summary of current knowledge on inflation persistence and price stickiness in the euro area, based on research findings that have been produced in the context of the Inflation Persistence Network. The main findings are: i) Under the current monetary policy regime, the...

We study the incidence and severity of lower-bound episodes and the efficacy of three types of state-dependent policies—forward guidance about the future path of interest rates, large-scale asset purchases and spending-based fiscal stimulus—in ameliorating the adverse consequences stemming...

Based on ordered Probit models and twenty years of euro area data, we estimate empirical reaction functions for the ECB´s monetary policy and augment them with communication indicators. First, we find that the ECB responded to risks to price stability in line with its primary objective, and...

This paper examines whether the interest rate preferences of Federal Reserve Bank Presidents are subject to a regional bias. In order to evaluate the regional bias hypothesis, we augment individual Taylor rules for the Federal Reserve Bank Presidents (sample 1989 to 2006) with regional variables...

The aim of this paper is to examine whether Chairman Greenspan influenced the Reserve Bank Presidents. This question is interesting, because it has been argued that their preferences would be more persistent compared to those of the Governors. We estimate individual Taylor-type reaction...