This paper assesses how globalisation has shaped the economic environment in which the ECB operates and discusses whether this warrants adjustments to the monetary policy strategy. The paper first looks at how trade and financial integration have evolved since the last strategy review in 2003....

In order to assess the effect of fiscal rules in Stage Three of EMU for France and Germany, Bayoumi and Eichengreen's (1992) structural VAR analysis is extended by including the general government financial surplus and conditioning by external variables. This allows a distinction between fiscal...

This paper discusses the purposes and limits of " structural " VAR modeling. It explains the choices that modelers have to make at different stages of the procedure. An illustration is provided by an analysis of monetary policy shocks in France over the 1972 : 1-1995 : 2. Compared with previous...