Measuring exchange rate flexibility in Europe

In official terms, European countries that are not in the EMU have been showing a polarization of monetary policy regimes in the last fifteen years: either Inflation Targeting or fixed exchange rates. I apply several methods recently developed by the literature to measure exchange rate flexibility to these European countries, in order to see whether such polarization has indeed occurred from a de facto point of view. Using these approaches, I find that the move to Inflation Targeting did bring about higher exchange rate flexibility, but only up to a level that is not comparable to that of the non-European benchmark floaters. Inflation Targeters in Europe also seem to have put some weight on stabilization of the exchange rate vis à vis the euro, after its introduction; fixed exchange rate arrangements, instead, apart from official policy changes, remained mostly stable throughout the last decade.