An economy is in a liquidity trap when monetary policy cannot influence either real or nominal variables of interest. A necessary condition for this is that the short nominal interest rate is constrained by its lower bound, typically zero. The paper considers two small analytical models, one...

Jim Tobin, who died on March 11, 2002 at the age of 84, was one of giants of economics of the second half of the twentieth century and the greatest macroeconomist of his generation. Tobin’s influence on macroeconomic theory is so pervasive - so much part of our professional ‘acquis’ - that...

The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. In this paper, we explore possible justifications. The case against including money in the central bank's interest rate rule is based on a standard model...

We investigate the possible existence of asymmetries among Euro Area countries reactions to the European Central Bank monetary policy. Our analysis is based on a Structural Dynamic Factor model estimated on a large panel of quarterly variables including data on the aggregate Euro Area, as well...

In this paper we examine why monetary aggregates of euro area Member States have developed differently since the inception of the euro. We derive a money demand equation that incorporates housing wealth and collateral as well as substitution effects on real money holdings. Empirically, we show...

This paper examines the relation between money and housing variables in the euro area and in the US. Our empirical model is based on a standard money demand relation which is augmented by housing market variables. In doing so, co-integrated money demand relationships can be established for both...

This paper describes and quantifies the macroeconomic effects of different types of terms of trade shocks and their propagation in the Australian economy. Three types of shocks are identified based on their impact on commodity prices, global manufactured prices, and global economic activity. The...

We estimate the impulse response of key US macro series to the monetary policy shocks identified by Romer and Romer (2004), allowing the response to depend flexibly on the state of the business cycle. We find strong evidence that the effects of monetary policy on real and nominal variables are...

The standard New Keynesian model suffers from the so-called .macro-micro pricing conflict: in order to match the dynamics of inflation implied by macroeconomic data, the model needs to assume an average duration of price contracts which is much longer than what is observed in micro data. Here I...