Suchergebnisse

We analyze optimal monetary policy in a sticky pricemodel where the central bank supplies money outrightvia asset purchases and lends money temporarily againstcollateral. The terms of central bank lending affect ra-tioning of money and impact on macroeconomic aggre-gates. The central bank can set the policy rate and itsinflation target in a way that implements the first bestlong-run allocation, which is impossible if money weresupplied in a lump-sum way (as commonly assumed).Efficient central bank lending further increases gainsfrom macroeconomic stabilization beyond pure interestrate policy. This requires departing from a Treasuries-only regime.

Intro -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Tables and figures -- Preface -- 1 Introduction: European integration -- 2 From the Bretton Woods system to European Monetary Union -- Exchange rate turbulence since the end of the 1960s -- The European Monetary System -- 3 The Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact -- The Maastricht Treaty -- The Maastricht criteria -- The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) -- 4 Structure, political and legal framework of the European Central Bank -- The organizational structure of the European System of Central Banks -- The independence of central banks and the ECB -- Prohibition of direct financing of public budgets -- Personal independence -- Financial independence -- Target independence -- Exchange rate policy -- Instrument independence -- Accountability and transparency -- Legal foundations of independence -- Summary -- 5 Preconditions for a stable monetary union -- Summary -- 6 The failure of the two-pillar strategy of the ECB and the revival of Wicksell -- Money in the Keynesian tradition -- The two-pillar strategy of the ECB -- Monetary policy in the tradition of Knut Wicksell -- 7 Increasing economic fragility IN THE EMU before the financial crisis -- Interest rates, asset bubbles and GDP growth -- Wages, unit labour costs and prices -- Current account imbalances -- Fiscal policy -- Different macroeconomic regimes in the EMU -- Summary -- 8 Monetary policy during the Great Recession -- The financial market crisis and Great Recession in the EMU -- The monetary policy response -- Fiscal policy and bank bailouts -- Summary -- 9 Monetary policy and the escalation of the euro crisis until 2012 -- No comprehensive lender of last resort for public households -- The ECB's monetary policy -- Limited help for public households -- Target2-balances.

"Dieses Paper beginnt seine Darstellung mit dem Konzept der Unabhängigkeit von Zentralbanken und konzentriert sich auf einen der wesentlichsten Nachteile, nämlich das mögliche Fehlen von politischer Verantwortlichkeit. Anschließend werden auf Basis eines alternativen Indexes für die rechtliche Unabhängigkeit von Zentralbanken die aktuellen Statuten von 32 Zentralbanken analysiert und deren Grad an rechtlicher Unabhängigkeit und politischer Verantwortlichkeit quantifiziert. Mit diesen Daten werden frühere Studien bestätigt, die eine de jure negative Beziehung zwischen Zentralbankunabhängigkeit und demokratischer Verantwortlichkeit zeigen, allerdings nicht ganz so stark wie üblicherweise behauptet. Dennoch bleibt festzuhalten, dass auch einige sehr unabhängige Zentralbanken auch besonders wenig politisch verantwortlich sind - die Europäische Zentralbank (EZB) ist dafür ein gutes Beispiel. Abschließend werden die Vor- und Nachteile eines Vertrages 'a la Walsh' zwischen der EZB und der EG diskutiert und wir fordern eine tiefere Analyse dieser Themen, um das institutionelle Bild der EWU zu verbessern." (Autorenreferat)

Since the first acute episode of financial crisis in autumn 2008, the world has manifestly changed in dramatic ways that reinforce skepticism and challenge the old assumptions of political economy. Hence this Article about central banks, whose pivotal role in post-crisis capitalism has not been adequately politically or theoretically addressed in any existing literature and can now be opened up by a conjunctural analysis that recognises uncertainty and mutability. There are several reasons why this is an intellectually and politically interesting task. Central banks have become an object of controversy and public attention after being pivotally involved in crisis management, which has since 2010 increasingly involved nonstandard monetary-policy crisis measures applied on a heroic scale. For example, in December 2011 and February 2012, Mario Draghi offered one trillion euros of cheap credit to European banks. This is a kind of role reversal for the bankers and a bouleversement of an institution that had been recently reinvented in a technocratic paradigm. After the 1980s, central bankers became respected econocrats whose technical practice was inflation targeting via shortterm interest-rate variation with freedom from political interference (or democratic accountability) justified by claims of technical mastery and neutrality. This Article that explores these issues is organized in a relatively straightforward way. Part II provides a brief overview of the scientization of central banking and the recent return to improvization. Then, Part III focuses on the peculiarity of a new conjuncture where the central banks have gone long on no growth capitalism. Part IV provides an overview of mainstream verdicts for and against quantitative easing, while Part V presents our analysis of the distributive issues.

We present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral. Setting a haircut therefore involves balancing the trade-off between relaxing the liquidity constraints of agents on one hand, and increasing potential inflation risk and distorting the portfolio choices of agents on the other. We argue that the optimal haircut is higher when the central bank is unable to lend exclusively to agents who actually need liquidity. Finally, for an unexpected drop in the haircut, the central bank can be more aggressive than when setting a permanent level of the haircut.