This study will put under close scrutiny the monetary transmission process in the eurozone between 2003 and 2011. To this purpose, we investigate the interest rate pass-through from money market rates to various loan rates for up to twelve countries of the European Monetary Union. Applying a...

This study analyzes the exchange rate pass-through into German import prices based on disaggregated data taken on a monthly basis between 1995 and 2012. Our main contribution is twofold: firstly, we employ various time-series techniques to analyze data for different product categories, and also...

In this paper we describe the genesis of a doomsday scenario and discuss potential causes and motivations for a breakup of the euro area. For this purpose, we differentiate between the departure of weak and strong countries, and examine the impact of the reintroduction of a national currency on...

This paper tries to clarify the question of whether foreign exchange market interventions conducted by the Bank of Japan are important for the dollar-yen exchange rate in the long run. Our strategy relies on a re-examination of the empirical performance of a monetary exchange rate model. This is...

Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both...

This paper briefly assesses the effectiveness of the different non-standard monetary policy tools in the Euro Area. Its main focus is on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme which is praised by some as the ECB’s “magic wand”. Moreover, it discloses further possible unintended...

This paper comments on the role of the Monetary Dialogue in the context of an evolving monetary policy. The discussion is conducted in terms of the adoption of forward guidance on interest rates by the European Central Bank (ECB), the ECB’s model choice and data revision policies in inflation...

Two of the four macroeconomic adjustment programmes, Portugal and Ireland’s, can be considered a success in the sense that the initial expectations in terms of adjustment, both fiscal and external, were broadly fulfilled. A rebound based on exports has taken hold in these two countries, but a...

This paper argues that using gold as collateral for highly distressed bonds would bring great benefits to the euro area in terms of reduced financing costs and bridge-financing. It is mindful of the legal issues that this will raise and that such a suggestion will be highly controversial....

Traditional specifications of export equations incorporate foreign demand as a demand pull factor and the real exchange rate as a relative price variable. However, such standard export equations have failed to explain the export performance of euro area countries during the crisis period. In...