This paper examines the implications of recent research on monetary policy rules for practical monetary policy making, with special emphasis on strategies for setting interest rates by the European Central Bank (ECB). The paper draws on recent research and new simulations of a large open economy

We study the effects on the optimal monetary policy design problem of al-lowing for deviations from the law of one price in import goods prices. We reach three basic results. First, we show that incomplete pass-through renders the analysis of monetary policy of an open economy fundamentally different from the one of a closed economy, unlike canonical models with perfect pass-through which emphasize a type of isomorphism. Second, and in response to efficient productivity shocks, incomplete pass-through has the effect of generat-ing endogenously a short-run tradeoff between the stabilization of inflation and of the output gap. This holds independently of the measure of inflation being targeted by the monetary authority. Third, in studying the optimal program under commitment relative to discretion, we show that the former entails a smoothing of the deviations from the law of one price, in stark contrast with the established empirical evidence. In addition, an optimal commitment policy always requires, relative to discretion, more stable nominal and real exchange rates.

A ll around the world in matters of governance, decentralization is the rage.Even apart from the widely debated issues of subsidiarity and devolution inthe European Union and states ’ rights in the United States, decentraliza-tion has been at the center stage of policy experiments in the last two

1 Software used in the estimation of this paper can be found at http://weber.ucsd.edu/~ksheppar in the research section. Kevin Sheppard would like to acknowledge financial support from the European Central Bank. While all efforts have been made to ensure that there are no errors in the paper

In 2004 all publications will carry a motif taken from the €100 banknote. This paper can be downloaded without charge from

New Keynesian Phillips Curves (NKPC) have been extensively used in the analysis of monetary policy, but yet there are a number of issues of concern about how they are estimated and then related to the underlying macroeconomic theory. The first is whether such equations are identified. To check identification requires specifying the process for the forcing variables (typically the output gap) and solving the model for inflationintermsoftheobservables. Inpractice,theequationisestimatedby GMM, relying on statistical criteria to choose instruments. This may result in failure of identification or weak instruments. Secondly, the NKPC is usually derived as a part of a DSGE model, solved by log-linearising around a steady state and the variables are then measured in terms of deviations from the steady state. In practice the steady states, e.g. for output, are usually estimated by some statistical procedure such as the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter that might not be appropriate. Thirdly, there are arguments that other variables, e.g. interest rates, foreign inflation and foreign output gaps should enter the Phillips curve. This paper examines these three issues and argues that all three benefit from a global perspective. The global perspective provides additional instruments to alleviate the weak instrument problem, yields a theoretically consistent measure of the steady state and provides a natural route for foreign inflation or output gap to enter the NKPC. Keywords: Global VAR (GVAR), identification, New Keynesian Phillips Curve, Trend-Cycle decomposition.

This study investigates the pricing behaviour of firms in the euro area on the basis of comparable surveys conducted, in a decentralised way, by nine Eurosystem national central banks (NCBs). Overall, more than 10,000 firms participated in the survey, providing evidence for the euro area on issues

Cross-country bank lending appears to be subject to market imperfections leading to persistent interest rate differentials. In a model where banks need to cope with liquidity shocks by borrowing or by liquidating assets, we study the scope for international interbank market integration

We examine job flows in the 1990s for a sample of 12 European countries. By using a dataset of continuing firms that covers all sectors, we find firm characteristics to be important determinants of job flows, with smaller and younger firms within services typically having a larger degree of job

* Currently European Central Bank. Research completed while at Bank of England.