In this year of the euro’s 25th anniversary, the book revisits the architecture of the European currency union as it continues to evolve and faces today’s concurrent challenges posed by its members’ high and diverging government debt levels, debt sustainability concerns, and the considerable public expenditures, investments and reforms needed in particular to address climate change and the green transition. Key components reviewed include the single monetary policy for the eurozone; the common rules and processes for keeping a measure of discipline and orderliness in the members’ economic and budgetary policies; the containment of financial fragmentation within the eurozone; and stability support for members under financial stress. The book focuses on the central role of the European Central Bank (ECB) and considers such issues as: how the ECB has defined its monetary policy mandate and calibrated its actions within the matrix of broadly worded objectives and constraints set by the EU Treaties; the possible tensions and trade-offs between the ECB’s primary mission of inflation control and the episodic need to avert risks to financial stability, contain financial fragmentation and preserve the cohesion of the European currency union; the difficulties of a single monetary policy interacting with the relative heterogeneity of economic characteristics and national fiscal policies across the eurozone; the ECB’s possible role in supporting the transition to a lower-carbon economy; and how judicial review by the European Court of Justice has to contend with the complexities and inherent uncertainties of monetary analysis and the ECB’s need of a broad margin of policy judgment. As part of the EU’s incomplete economic and monetary union, the currency union remains a work in progress. The challenges and choices at hand present serious legal questions that cannot be viewed in isolation from the economic and political issues—a kind of 3D combination puzzle to be solved.

In this year of the euro's 25th anniversary, the book revisits the architecture of the European currency union as it continues to evolve and faces today's concurrent challenges posed by its members' high and diverging government debt levels, debt sustainability concerns, and the considerable public expenditures, investments and reforms needed in particular to address climate change and the green transition. Key components reviewed include the single monetary policy for the eurozone; the common rules and processes for keeping a measure of discipline and orderliness in the members' economic and budgetary policies; the containment of financial fragmentation within the eurozone; and stability support for members under financial stress. The book focuses on the central role of the European Central Bank (ECB) and considers such issues as: how the ECB has defined its monetary policy mandate and calibrated its actions within the matrix of broadly worded objectives and constraints set by the EU Treaties; the possible tensions and trade-offs between the ECB's primary mission of inflation control and the episodic need to avert risks to financial stability, contain financial fragmentation and preserve the cohesion of the European currency union; the difficulties of a single monetary policy interacting with the relative heterogeneity of economic characteristics and national fiscal policies across the eurozone; the ECB's possible role in supporting the transition to a lower-carbon economy; and how judicial review by the European Court of Justice has to contend with the complexities and inherent uncertainties of monetary analysis and the ECB's need of a broad margin of policy judgment. As part of the EU's incomplete economic and monetary union, the currency union remains a work in progress. The challenges and choices at hand present serious legal questions that cannot be viewed in isolation from the economic and political issues-a kind of 3D combination puzzle to be solved.

The first twenty years of the European Central Bank offer a unique insight into how a central bank can navigate macroeconomic insecurity and crisis. This volume examines the structures and decision-making processes behind the complex measures taken by the ECB to tackle some of the toughest economic challenges in the history of modern Europe.

Contributions from Viral Acharya, Joshua Aizenman, Franklin Allen, Thorsten Beck, Erik Bergl f, Claudia Buch, Elena Carletti, Ralph de Haas, Luis Garicano, Andrew Gimber, Charles Goodhart, Vasso Ioannidou, Daniel Gros, Dirk Schoenmaker, Geoffrey Underhill, Wolf Wagner, Benjamin Weigert, Frank Westermann, Charles Wyplosz and Jeromin Zettelmeyer.

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Not long ago, secrecy was the byword in central banking circles, but now the unmistakable trend is towards greater openness and transparency. This, the third Geneva Report on the World Economy, describes and evaluates some of the changes in how central banks talk to the markets, to the press, and to the public. The report first assesses the case for transparency ? defined as providing sufficient information for the public to understand the policy regime ? and concludes that it is very strong, based on both policy effectiveness and democratic accountability. It then examines what should be the content of communication and argues that central banks ought to spell out their long-run objectives and methods. It then investigates the link between the decision-making process and central bank communication, drawing a distinction between individualistic and collegial committees. The report concludes with a review of the communications strategies of some of the main central banks.

Discussions on the outcome of a potential referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU have been characterised by political grandstanding, at the expense of serious economic analysis. With Brexit now a real possibility in the next Parliament, the IEA today releases a report outlining four different options for the UK in the event of a vote to leave the EU, all of which take into account both economic challenges and possibilities. In Brexit: Directions for Britain Outside the EU, various contributors outline several of possible approaches, ranging from a proposal that Britain should promote free trade and openness through the unilateral removal of trade barriers, to maintaining formal relationships with European countries through the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and/or the European Economic Area (EEA). Other proposals offer a view that the UK should seek to form economic and political alliances with countries outside of Europe, such as those in the Commonwealth.

This report by the Central Bank Governance Group presents information intended to help decision-makers set up governance arrangements that are most suitable for their own circumstances. The report draws on a large body of information on the design and operation of central banks that the BIS has brought together since it initiated work on central bank governance in the early 1990s. The need to deal with chronic inflation in the 1970s and 1980s prompted the identification of price stability as a formal central bank objective and led to a significant reworking of governance arrangements. The current global financial crisis could have equally important implications for central banks, particularly with respect to their role in fostering financial stability. Although it is too early to know how central banking will change as a result, the report takes an important first step in identifying governance questions that the crisis poses.

The flexibility shown by the ECB/Eurosystem in adapting its framework, as required by circumstances, has helped improve funding and liquidity conditions. Compared to the situation pre-crisis, the ECB/Eurosystem has provided liquidity against a broader range of collateral and for as long as four years in terms of maturity; extended liquidity in foreign currency; conducted outright purchases of public and private sector assets (now tapering off); and reduced interest rates into negative territory. In these arrangements, policy is directed from the center, but is implemented mostly by the National Central Banks (NCBs); risks are largely shared. Market participants are complimentary about the role the ECB/Eurosystem has played in backstopping the financial system and its forward guidance on monetary policy.

Monetary aggregates continue to play an important role in the ECB's policy strategy. This paper revisits the case for money, surveying the ongoing theoretical and empirical debate. The key conclusion is that an exclusive focus on non-monetary factors alone may leave the ECB with an incomplete picture of the economy. However, treating monetary factors as a separate matter is a second-best solution. Instead, a general-equilibrium inspired analytical framework that merges the economic and monetary "pillars" of the ECB's policy strategy appears the most promising way forward. The role played by monetary aggregates in such unified framework may be rather limited. However, an integrated framework would facilitate the presentation of policy decisions by providing a clearer narrative of the relative role of money in the interaction with other economic and financial sector variables, including asset prices, and their impact on consumer prices.