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...

Forbearance is a practice of granting concessions to troubled borrowers, typically in the form of prolongation of maturity or refinancing of the loan. While economically useful in some circumstances, it can be used by banks in order to reduce the need for provisions and conceal potential losses....

This paper provides empirical evidence on the macroeconomic impact of the expanded asset purchase programme (APP) announced by the European Central Bank (ECB) in January 2015. The shock associated to the APP is identified with a combination of sign, timing and magnitude restrictions in the...

In a highly interlinked global economy a key question for policy makers is how foreign shocks and policies transmit to the domestic economy. We develop a semi-structural multi-country model with rich real and financial channels of international shock propagation for the euro area, the US, Japan,...

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...

Starting in summer 2014, markets began to build up expectations that the European Central Bank (ECB) would embark on large-scale sovereign bond purchases. The ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) was eventually announced on 22 January 2015 and purchases started in March. Both during the...

This paper investigates the impact of ample liquidity provision by the European Central Bank on the functioning of the overnight unsecured interbank market from 2008 to 2014. We use novel data on interbank transactions derived from TARGET2, the main euro area payment system. To identify...

The paper provides a systematic comparison of the Eurosystem, the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan. These monetary authorities exhibit somewhat different status and tasks, which reflect different historical conditions and national characteristics. However, widespread changes in central...

We explain the role of the Phillips Curve in the analysis of the economic outlook and the formulation of monetary policy at the ECB. First, revisiting the structural Phillips Curve, we highlight the challenges in recovering structural parameters from reduced-form estimates and relate the...

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates more vigorously in the recent recession than the European Central Bank did. By comparison with the Fed, the ECB followed a more measured course of action. We use an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions to show that...