Opinion
Reading tea leaves from China’s two sessions: Large monetary and fiscal stimulus and still no growth guarantee
The announcement of a large stimulus without a growth target indicates that China’s recovery is far from complete.
Upcoming Event
The ECB is reviewing its monetary policy strategy. How to ensure monetary policy is fit for purpose in a fast changing world?
Opinion
The announcement of a large stimulus without a growth target indicates that China’s recovery is far from complete.
Policy Contribution
To keep the euro-area economy afloat, the European Central Bank has put in place a large number of measures since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. This response has triggered fears of a future increase in inflation. However, the ECB's new measures and the resulting increase in the size of its balance sheet, even if it were to be permanent, should not restrict its ability to achieve its price-stability mandate, within its legal obligations.
Opinion
This opinion piece was originally published in Asia Times and Medium China’s GDP in the first quarter of the year has surprised nobody but the devil is in the details. Local retail sales continued to fall in March (-16%), marginally better than during the peak of the Covid19 outbreak in January and February. The continuation […]
Blog Post
The implementation of a Derivative Market Programme could reaffirm the ECB’s credibility and strong commitment to price stability.
Blog Post
The ECB is looking to evaluate whether its definition of price stability is effective in helping anchor inflation expectations. We argue that the current definition does not make for a very good focal point. To become a focal point the ECB needs to do two things. Price stability should be defined as inflation at 2 percent,. Remove therefore the unnecessary ambiguity of "below but close to 2 percent". But that is not enough. Around that 2 percent, the ECB should say which levels of inflation it is prepared to tolerate. There need to be explicit bands defined around that 2 percent to provide a framework for economic agents to evaluate Central Bank performance. And as the ECB will have to operate under high levels fo uncertainty these bands need to be wider than tolerance of inflation between 1 and 3 percent, which is what many inflation targeting Central Banks have tolerated over the years.
Policy Contribution
What did we learn from the recent monetary policy normalisation experiences of Sweden, the United States and the United Kingdom? Zsolt Darvas consider the lessons and analyse the European Central Bank’s forecasting track record and possible factors that might explain the forecast errors.
Blog Post
In the past five years ECB forecasts have proven to be systematically incorrect: core inflation remained broadly stable at 1% despite the stubbornly predicted increase, while the unemployment rate fell faster than predicted. Such forecast errors, which are also inconsistent with each other, raise serious doubts about the reliability of the ECB’s current forecast of accelerating core inflation and necessitates a reflection on the inflation aim of the ECB.
Policy Contribution
In this Policy Contribution prepared for the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) as an input to the Monetary Dialogue, the authors review the emerging challenges to central banks, and propose an updated definition of price stability and an adequately refined monetary policy framework.
Podcast
Bruegel senior fellow Zsolt Darvas welcomes Sayuri Shirai, professor at Keio University, visiting scholar at the Asian Development Bank Institute and former Member of the Policy Board of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), for a discussion of the Japanese monetary policy outlook.
Blog Post
Have prices moved in the direction of correcting real exchange rate misalignments everywhere in the euro area in recent years? Not between the largest euro-area economies, i.e. France, Germany and Italy, says evidence from the Big Mac index. However, latest trends may be working in the right direction in these countries too.
Blog Post
The full consequences of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union were never going to be immediately perceptible. As we approach the second anniversary of the UK’s Brexit referendum, we can compare the subsequent economic data for the UK and the euro area and see how it diverges from the trends established before the vote.