Monetary Policy. The Role of the European Central Bank

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Finance, , language: English, abstract: The aim of the present paper is to present the monetary policy of the ECB and record the changes in this policy caused by the recent economic crisis from 2007 onwards. Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of an economic area checks the quantity and the cost of money in the economy. The official goals of monetary policy are the control of inflation, the growth of the economy, the reduction of unemployment and the control of the exchange rate in relation to foreign currencies. Monetary policy may be expansive, namely to increase the amount of money in the market by encouraging economic development, but causing an increase in inflation, or it can be limiting, i.e. to reduce the amount of money in the market by keeping inflation low. In the Euro Zone, monetary policy is pursued by the European Central Bank (ECB), which was created with the birth of the euro, when it took over the responsibility for the design and practice of monetary policy by the central banks of the Eurozone countries and operates as an independent, supranational but European organization.