IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5581.html

How the Bundesbank Conducts Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Clarida
  • Mark Gertler

Abstract

This paper analyzes German monetary policy in the post-Bretton Woods era. Despite the public focus on monetary targeting, in practice, German monetary policy involves the management of short term interest rates, as it does in the United States. Except during the mid to late 1970s, the Bundesbank has aggressively adjusted interest rates to achieve and maintain low inflation. The performance of the real economy, however, also influences its decision-making. Our formal analysis suggests that the Bundesbank has adjusted short term interest rates according to a modified version of the feedback rule that Taylor (1994) has used to characterize the behavior of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Clarida & Mark Gertler, 1996. "How the Bundesbank Conducts Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 5581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5581
    Note: IFM ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5581.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard H. Clarida & Jordi Gali, 1994. "Sources of real exchange rate fluctuations: how important are nominal shocks?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Apr.
    2. Bruce Kasman, 1992. "A comparison of monetary policy operating procedures in six industrial countries," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 17(Sum), pages 5-24.
    3. Kristina Jacobson & George A. Kahn, 1989. "Lessons from West German monetary policy," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 74(Apr), pages 18-35.
    4. Gordon, David B & Leeper, Eric M, 1994. "The Dynamic Impacts of Monetary Policy: An Exercise in Tentative Identification," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1228-1247, December.
    5. Ben S. Bernanke & Ilian Mihov, 1998. "Measuring Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 869-902.
    6. Martin S. Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 1992. "Some empirical evidence on the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates," Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues 92-32, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    7. Laurence Ball, 1994. "What Determines the Sacrifice Ratio?," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 155-193, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Ben Bernanke & Frederic Mishkin, 1992. "Central Bank Behavior and the Strategy of Monetary Policy: Observations from Six Industrialized Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1992, Volume 7, pages 183-238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Uctum, Merih, 1999. "European integration and asymmetry in the EMS," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 769-798, October.
    10. Grilli, Vittorio & Roubini, Nouriel, 1992. "Liquidity and exchange rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3-4), pages 339-352, May.
    11. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    12. Bharat Trehan, 1988. "The practice of monetary targeting: a case study of the West German experience," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Spr, pages 30-44.
    13. N. Gregory Mankiw, 1994. "Monetary Policy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number greg94-1, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernanke, Ben S. & Mihov, Ilian, 1997. "What does the Bundesbank target?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1025-1053, June.
    2. John H. Rogers, 1995. "Real shocks and real exchange rates in really long-term data," International Finance Discussion Papers 493, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Hess Chung & Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy Switching," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 809-842, June.
    4. Ozlale, Umit, 2003. "Price stability vs. output stability: tales of federal reserve administrations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(9), pages 1595-1610, July.
    5. Hilde C. Bjørnland, 1998. "Economic Fluctuations in a Small Open Economy - Real versus Nominal Shocks," Discussion Papers 215, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    6. Lastrapes, W. D., 1998. "International evidence on equity prices, interest rates and money," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 377-406, June.
    7. Eric M. Leeper & Tao Zha, 2002. "Empirical analysis of policy interventions," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue mar.
    8. John W. Keating & Logan J. Kelly & A. Lee Smith & Victor J. Valcarcel, 2019. "A Model of Monetary Policy Shocks for Financial Crises and Normal Conditions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(1), pages 227-259, February.
    9. Giuseppe De Arcangelis & Giorgio Di Giorgio, 1999. "Monetary policy shocks and transmission in Italy: A VAR analysis," Economics Working Papers 446, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    10. Laurence Ball, 1999. "Efficient Rules for Monetary Policy," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 63-83, April.
    11. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Has the business cycle changed?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 9-56.
    12. Grilli, Vittorio & Roubini, Nouriel, 1996. "Liquidity models in open economies: Theory and empirical evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 847-859, April.
    13. Bagliano, Fabio C. & Favero, Carlo A., 1999. "Information from financial markets and VAR measures of monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 825-837, April.
    14. Robert Amano & Paul Fenton & David Tessier & Simon van Norden, 1996. "The credibility of monetary policy: a survey of the literature with some simple applications to Caanda," Meeting papers 9610001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Chen, Zhengyang & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2025. "Modeling inflation expectations in forward-looking interest rate and money growth rules," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 170, pages 1-21.
    16. Fabio Canova & Joaquim Pires Pina, 1998. "Monetary policy misspecification in VAR models," Economics Working Papers 420, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 1999.
    17. Kalyvitis, Sarantis & Skotida, Ifigeneia, 2010. "Some empirical evidence on the effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks on cross exchange rates," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 386-394, August.
    18. Eric M. Leeper & Jennifer E. Roush, 2003. "Putting \\"M\\" back in monetary policy," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 1217-1264.
    19. Eric M. Leeper & Tao Zha, 2001. "Assessing simple policy rules: a view from a complete macroeconomic model," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 83(Jul), pages 83-112.
    20. Aaron Tornell, 2003. "Exchange Rate Puzzles and Distorted Beleifs (June 2003), with Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas," UCLA Economics Online Papers 265, UCLA Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5581. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.