Tobias Arbogast Awarded Doctorate for Work on Monetary Policy of Independent Central Banks

Tobias Arbogast successfully defended his dissertation, “Navigating by the Stars: The Role of ‘Natural Rates’ in Monetary Policy,” at the University of Cologne at the end of March. In his study, Arbogast examines the significance of the “natural rates” of unemployment, interest, and output for independent central banks’ monetary policy. While a theoretical consensus has emerged on the goals and limits of monetary policy, central banks must exercise discretion in the complex realities of economic policy. Arbogast analyzes this tension using interviews and quantitative text analysis of the central banks of Chile, Argentina, the eurozone, and the US, thereby shedding light on a central yet controversial aspect of modern monetary theory. His dissertation was supervised by Lucio Baccaro, a director at the MPIfG and head of the Political Economy Research Area. Tobias Arbogast was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy from 2020 to 2025.