We investigate the implications of changes in the structure of the US economy for monetary policy effectiveness. Estimating a VAR over the pre- and post-1980 periods, we provide evidence of a reduced effect of monetary policy shocks in the latter period. We estimate a structural model that...

In broad perspective, there have been essentially two competing views of the global financial crisis, albeit there are some complementarities among them. One view looks across the border: it mainly blames external imbalances, the large-scale mix of unprecedented pattern current account deficits...

The paper considers three methods for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and thus for restoring symmetry to domain over which the central bank can vary its policy rate. They are: (1) abolishing currency (which would also be a useful crime-fighting measure); (2) paying...

Periods of high indebtedness have historically been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. Sometimes the debt restructuring is more subtle and takes the form of 'financial repression'. Consistent negative real interest rates are equivalent to...

We estimate a three-country model using 1995-2013 data for Germany, the Rest of the Euro Area (REA) and the Rest of the World (ROW) to analyze the determinants of Germany’s current account surplus after the launch of the Euro. The most important factors driving the German surplus were positive...

In this paper we develop a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model of the Greek economy, in the real business cycle modelling tradition. Household preferences depend on private and public consumption and leisure. Government finances its investment, consumption and transfer payments by means...

This paper quantifies the costs of adhering to a fixed-exchange-rate arrangement, such as a currency union, for emerging economies. To this end it develops a novel dynamic stochastic disequilibrium model of a small open economy with monetary nonneutrality due to downward nominal wage rigidity....

After a brief review of the main differences between New and Old Keynesian economics from the 1960s this paper focuses on a tension between traditional sluggish measures of potential output commonly used by policy-makers and the New Keynesian (NK) notion of this variable which conceptualizes it...

The paper discusses some fundamental problems in monetary economics associated with the determination and role of the numéraire. The issues are introduced by formalising a proposal, attributed to Eisler, to remove the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates by unbundling the numéraire and...

We analyze the contribution of credit spread, house and stock price shocks to GDP growth in the US based on a Bayesian VAR with time-varying parameters estimated over 1958-2012. Our main findings are: (i) The contribution of financial shocks to GDP growth fluctuates from about 20 percent in...