The major central banks now operate in a regime of abundance of bank reserves. As a result, they can only raise the money market rate by increasing the rate of remuneration of bank reserves. This, in turn, leads to large transfers of the central banks' profits (and more) to commercial banks that...

In a world of radical uncertainty the frequency distributions of economic variables deviate from the normal distribution and typically exhibit fat tails. We show that this feature is obtained in simple models where agents have cognitive limitations and fail to understand the underlying model....

In this paper we address the issue of how transmission uncertainty could affect the choice between a federal monetary policy based on national data and one on aggregated data.We find that the uncertainty about the transmission process increases the need to take into account information about...

We analyze the similarities and the differences in the fragility of the European Monetary System (EMS) and the Eurozone. We test the hypothesis that in the EMS the fragility arose from the absence of a credible lender of last resort in the foreign exchange markets while in the Eurozone it was...

The ECB has announced that when government and corporate bonds come to maturity in the context of its QE-program, new bonds will be bought in the market so as to keep the money stock (money base) unchanged. This creates a "window of opportunities" for the ECB. It could replace the old bonds with...

We evaluate the policy of flexible inflation targeting implemented by the Norges Bank since March 2001. We discuss the reasons why the real interest rates are significantly higher in Norway than in the rest of Europe. Finally we propose some institutional changes that can improve the policy...

We analyze the similarities and the differences in the fragility of the European Monetary System (EMS) and the Eurozone. We test the hypothesis that in the EMS the fragility arose from the absence of a credible lender of last resort in the foreign exchange markets while in the Eurozone it was...

There is a wide consensus that the existence of structural rigidities in the Eurozone reduces the effectiveness of the ECB's monetary policies. In order to test this "ECB-handicap" hypothesis, we perform a meta-analysis of the effects of monetary policies in the US and the Eurozone countries....

In this paper we address the issue of how transmission uncertainty could affect the choice between a federal monetary policy based on national data and one on aggregated data. We find that the uncertainty about the transmission process increases the need to take into account information about...

We evaluate the policy of flexible inflation targeting implemented by the Norges Bank since March 2001. We discuss the reasons why the real interest rates are significantly higher in Norway than in the rest of Europe. Finally we propose some institutional changes that can improve the policy...