The natural rate of interest plays a key role in Wicksell's cumulative process as well as in modern monetary equilibrium models of the business cycle. It constitutes a useful concept for the theoretical analysis of the interdependence of monetary policy and economic fluctuations. However, the...

Empirical evidence on whether the euro area monetary transmission process has changed is, at best, mixed. We argue that this inconclusiveness is likely to be due to the fact that existing empirical studies concentrate on the effects of a particular development on a specific transmission channel....