The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank: A Theoretical Comparison of Their Legislative Mandates

In academic and policy circles, the assumption is often made that the Fed and the European Central Bank (ECB) have a perfectly identical understanding of what monetary policy can achieve and they follow the same policy strategy. This assumption seats uncomfortably with the different legislative mandates of the Fed and the ECB. Drawing on a critical analysis of the “new consensus” view in macroeconomics and its policy recommendations, this paper argues that the dual mandate of the Fed allows for a less restrictive set of theoretical assumptions than the single mandate of the ECB, and, for this reason, has to be preferred.