Monetary policy

Several prominent experts in US central banking have recently advocated a new policy framework: price-level targeting. What is it and what advantages and disadvantages does it offer over the current inflation targeting framework? Its main benefit would be to bring the policy of keeping interest rates low for some time after a recession – an unconventional policy tool used in fighting the last recession – into a conventional policy framework.

By December 2018, the Eurosystem will have bought more than EUR 2,500 billion of securities as part of its Asset Purchase Programmes (APP). These purchases are governed by a number of principles, one of which is "market neutrality". This is intended to minimise the potentially distortive effects of purchases on the functioning of the financial markets, while enabling the transmission of monetary policy stimulus to the economy. We demonstrate this in this blog by comparing the Eurosystem's purchasing techniques with those of other central banks.

Countries that adopt a strict inflation target experience stronger growth and lower inflation after large natural disaster shocks. Inflation targeting can hence serve as an important shock absorber thanks mainly to a different policy mix. The results indicate that relaxing the inflation targeting regime might generate potential costs, since the stabilisation of future recessions might become more difficult.

Central banks have adopted new unprecedented strategies to fight recent financial crises. In the euro area in 2012, one such tool allowed banks to use a wider set of corporate loans as guarantees when they borrow from the Eurosystem. Two recent studies show that this policy has been critical in fostering banks’ lending to firms during the crisis.