onetary policy has traditionally been viewed as the process by which a central bank uses its influence over the supply of money to promote its economic objectives. For example, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools of monetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [Federal Reserve] System to determine the total amount of money in existence or to alter that amount.” In fact, the v...

From the outset of Monetary Union, the ECB has assigned a “prominent role” to monetary analysis in its monetary policy strategy. This article describes a number of new tools for monetary analysis that have been developed on the basis of ECB research. It discusses how these tools are used to interpret monetary developments and ultimately to offer insights that support the conduct of monetary pol...

Though fiscal policies of central governments sometimes provide modest insurance against regional income shocks, this paper shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy among provincial governments can easily overwhelm these stabilizing effects. We examine the cyclicality of budget items among provincial governments in eight federations, showing that own-source taxes are highly pro-cyclical and contra...

A simple dynamic framework is used to show how consolidation plans that are robust and effective at capacity output can be undermined by demand failure. If the market panics and interest rates rise, the process can indeed become dynamically unstable. Tightening fiscal policy to reassure financial markets can lead to a low level “consolidation trap”, however. Better that the Central Bank acts to...

While there is increasing interest in decarbonizing or greening monetary policy, central banks are keen to maintain market neutrality. However, evidence that the has a bias towards carbon-intensive companies. The paper develops method tilt European Central Bank’s (ECB) asset and collateral framework low-carbon assets. We find medium tilting approach reduces carbon emissions ECB’s corporate bank...