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The paper analyses the monetary policy responses of the European Central Bank (ECB) to the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Our goals are on the one hand to explain chronologically the main measures in conventional and unconventional policies adopted by the ECB and on the other hand to analyse their effects on key interest rates, monetary aggregates and the money multiplier. The assessment is that the ECB?s monetary policy responses to the crisis have been ?too little, too late?, constrained by the institutional framework, which prevents the ECB from acting as a true central bank with the role of lender of last resort.

In the paper we analyze the impact of Inflation Targeting (IT) in Mexico. The objective is to evaluate the impact of the implementation of inflation targeting and full-fledged inflation targeting (FFIT) on the level and the variability of the inflation and the output in the Mexican economy. We conclude that inflation rates had been reduced in Mexico before the introduction of IT and FFIT. In our opinion, the structural reforms, including the Banxico reforms, are the main determinants of the decrease in inflation and its variability. The main impact of IT would have been the lock-in of inflation expectations around a low rate of inflation

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We study the origin of European imbalances in the context of European integration. As a whole, the European Union and Eurozone have had nearly balanced external accounts. However, member countries have presented divergent positions. We analyse the short-term and medium-term factors underlying the presence of European external imbalances. Our results reveal the existence of divergent trends in key macroeconomic variables within the Eurozone. Moreover, the current account (CA) responds in the short-term to real unit labour cost (ULC) and discretionary fiscal policy. However, we point out the possible existence of a structural component of the CA. When assessing the medium-term determinants of the CA imbalances, catching-up, old-age dependency ratio and country-level specialisation (non-price competitiveness) are relevant variables explaining those imbalances.