Klaas Knot: Knowns and unknowns of monetary policy instruments implications for monetary policy strategies

Keynote speech by Mr Klaas Knot, President of the Netherlands Bank, at the European Banking Institute Policy Conference "Banking in Europe; a political, a monetary and a supervisory perspective", Frankfurt am Main, 14 November 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
22 November 2019

At the European Banking Institute's policy conference of 14 November Klaas Knot was invited for a keynote speech. In this speech, Klaas Knot stated that our knowledge of unconventional monetary policy tools is still less developed than our understanding of conventional interest rate policies. In line with his recent endorsement of the call for a formal review of the ECB's monetary policy strategy under the new ECB-presidency, he invited the audience to be the cartographers of the ocean of the yet uncharted monetary policy.

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Ladies and gentlemen,  Thank you for the invitation to hold this keynote address.

We are drawing closer to the end of the year in which the ECB has been celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Typically, this type of event leads one to look back and reflect on the lessons learnt over time. And to evaluate how the lessons learnt can be taken on board in future endeavors. Indeed, the year has seen many conferences and papers dedicated to the tale of the ECB's first two decades. For European central bankers, the second of these two decades has been particularly challenging.