How to conduct monetary policies. The ECB in the past, present and future
研究了欧洲央行自成立以来操作程序的演变,从稀缺准备金下的走廊系统到量化宽松后的充裕准备金制度,并提出两级准备金要求以减少对银行的补贴,提高抗通胀效果。
We study the evolving operating procedures used by the ECB since its creation. During the period up to 2015, bank reserves were scarce and the ECB, like other central banks, used a corridor system in which the money market rate could fluctuate within the bounds set by the lending and the deposit rates. With the start of Quantitative Easing (QE) the operating procedure evolved into a regime of reserve abundance. This regime has become problematic since the inflation surge forced the central banks to raise the policy rate. The result has been a massive transfer of central banks’ profits (and more) to the banks. We propose a two-tier system of reserve requirements that would only remunerate the reserves in excess of the minimum required. This would drastically reduce the giveaways to banks, allow the central banks to maintain their current operating procedures and make monetary policies more effective in fighting inflation. This paper was presented at the ECB@25 Symposium at Erasmus University, Rotterdam on 16th January 2024. We are grateful to Mary Pieterse-Bloem, Sylvester Eijffinger, Casper de Vries, Charles Goodhart and other participants in the Symposium for comments and suggestions. We also profited from comments and suggestions of an anonymous referee. Previous versions of this paper profited from comments by Ignazio Angeloni, Peter Bofinger, Robert Holzmann, Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser, Karel Lannoo, Vivien Lévy-Garboua, Anna Lozmann, David Marsh, Wim Moesen, Joachim Nagel, Theo Peeters, Stefan Schmitz, Miklos Vari, and by participants in seminars and presentations at the London School of Economics, King’s College (London), the Bundesbank, the Central Bank of Luxembourg, OMFIF, Sciences Po (Paris), the Austrian National Bank, SUERF, the Polish National Bank and the National Bank of Ukraine.