“Monetary Policy in Times of Crisis – A Tale of Two Decades of the European Central Bank”

The presentation will cover the new book by Rostagno, Altavilla, Carboni, Lemke, Motto, Saint-Guilhem and Yiangou (Oxford University Press) that reviews the ECB’s monetary policy since 1999. It is a blend of narrative and selected in-depth analytics that intends to help readers obtain an insight into decision making in real time and staff’s analytical preparations of Governing Council decisions through the years. The material covered in the book has been one of the inputs into the just-concluded ECB’s strategy review. The first part of the presentation will give an overview of the book; the second part would zoom in on Chapter 3 “Strategy in Action” and focus on the trade-off created by the 1998 and 2003 ECB’s strategy, in which the policy aim was close to the price stability ceiling; the third part would focus on the instrument impact analysis of Chapter 6 “A Combined-Arms Strategy” and its extensions based on a new paper by the authors. Stefan Gerlach (EFG Bank), Sarah Holton (Central Bank of Ireland) and Peter Praet (former ECB Executive Board Member I SUERF Honorary Member) will discuss.