During the post-pandemic inflation surge, many central banks actively used communication about the inflation outlook as a policy tool to limit spillovers from realized to expected inflation. We present novel survey evidence showing that the ECB's guidance about the projected inflation path...

We study how households adjust their medium-term inflation expectations under the new ECB inflation targeting strategy. Survey respondents make little difference between the previous strategy of targeting inflation rates close to but below 2% and the new strategy with a 2% point target....

During the post-pandemic inflation surge, many central banks actively used communication about the inflation outlook as a policy tool to limit spillovers from realized to expected inflation. We present novel survey evidence showing that the ECB's guidance about the projected inflation path...

This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. Using a quite flexible interpolation routine, we construct several monthly series of Euro area real GDP, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. To account for the asymmetry in growth regimes and...

This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. We construct several monthly European real GDP series, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. Using this method we identify four business cycles. Studying further indicators of business activity, we...

The ECB’s price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has...

This paper examines the importance of central bank communication in ensuring the effectiveness of monetary policy and in underpinning the credibility, accountability and legitimacy of independent central banks. It documents how communication has become a monetary policy tool in itself; one...