In this paper we use the notion of a housing bubble as an equilibrium in which some investors hold houses only for resale purposes and not for the expectation of a dividend, either in the form of rents or utility. We provide a life-cycle model where households face collateral constraints that...

In this paper we analyze the effect of bank capital on lending expansion and contraction for nearly 150 years in Spain. We fi rst build up thoroughly a measure of bank leverage (i.e. the capital to assets ratio) for the Spanish banking sector starting in year 1880. Then, we run a proper...

The design of the key elements of a public budget-neutral environmental fiscal reform could have very different implications in terms of its environmental and macroeconomic impact. Our proposals rely on a carbon tax on fossil fuels covering all economic sectors. It would be a powerful and...

We develop the barebones of a highly stylized theoretical endogenous growth model for analyzing the impact of R&D investment on long run growth. We use this framework to identify a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model on GDP growth, inflation and R&D investment, along with the...

‘The Great Recession' was preceded by a prolonged period of high growth accompanied by low and stable inflation, the so-called ‘Great Moderation'. During that period, potential growth estimates were trending upwards and output gaps remained small. However, other imbalances were progressively...

Household debt in many advanced economies has increased significantly since the 1980s and accelerated in the years prior to the Great Recession, resulting in an aggregate reduction of saving rates in the developed economies. Some of those economies are now deleveraging, which may be affecting...

This paper analyses a group of quantitative indicators to guide the Basel III countercyclical capital buffer (CCB) in Spain. Using data covering three stress events in the Spanish banking system since the early 1960s, we describe a number of conceptual and practical issues that may arise with...

European banks hold 10% of their total assets in portfolios that give rise to unrealised gains and losses which under Basel III will no longer be allowed to be removed from banks' regulatory capital. Using a sample of European banks, and taking advantage of the different treatment afforded,...

After the recent crisis, a reduction was observed in global current account (“flow”) imbalances. Even so, global disequilibria as measured in terms of countries' net foreign assets (“stock imbalances”) kept increasing. This paper discusses whether stock imbalances have a stabilising or...

This paper estimates the steady state mark-ups of 23 branches of activity in seven developed countries (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain). The empirical methodology departs from the Hall (1988) seminal approach and incorporates the possibility of non-competitive labour markets....