"Institutional Overburdening" to a large extent was a consequence of the "Great Moderation". This term indicates that it was a period in which inflation had come down from rather high levels. Growth and employment were at least satisfying and variability of output had substantially declined. It...

This Policy White Paper assesses several main elements of ECB's upcoming review of its monetary policy strategy, announced in January 2020. Four aspects of the review are discussed in detail: i) ECB's definition of price stability and the arguments for and against inflation targeting; ii) the...

In a contribution prepared for the Athens Symposium on “Banking Union, Monetary Policy and Economic Growth”, Otmar Issing describes forward guidance by central banks as the culmination of the idea of guiding expectations by pure communication. In practice, he argues, forward guidance has...

As we are moving toward a eurozone banking union, the European Central Bank (ECB) is going to take over the regulatory oversight of 128 banks in November 2014. To that end, the ECB conducted a comprehensive assessment of these banks, which included an asset quality review (AQR) and a stress...

The European Central Bank (ECB) increased the emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for Greek banks from €50 billion in February 2015 to approximately €90 billion in June 2015. Its actions were accompanied by a discussion among academics, politicians and practitioners regarding the legitimacy...

The financial crisis which started in 2007 has caused a tremendous challenge for monetary policy. The simple concept of inflation targeting has lost its position as state of the art. There is a debate on whether the mandate of a central bank should not be widened. And, indeed, monetary policy...

On November 8, 2013, several members of the British House of Lords' Subcommittee A conducted a hearing at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, on "Genuine Economic and Monetary Union and its Implications for the UK". Professors Otmar Issing and Jan Pieter Krahnen were called as expert witnesses. The...

Historically Central Bank Independence (CBI) was anything but the norm. CBI seems to contradict core principles of democracy. Most economists were also against CBI. After the Great Inflation of the 1970ies many empirical studies demonstrated that there is a strong negative correlation between...

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis that started in 2007, policymakers were forced to respond quickly and forcefully to a recession caused not by short-term factors, but rather by an over-accumulation of debt by sovereigns, banks, and households: a so-called "balance sheet recession."...