This paper seeks to understand the interplay between banks, bank regulation, sovereign default risk and central bank guarantees in a monetary union. I assume that banks can use sovereign bonds for repurchase agreements with a common central bank, and that their sovereign partially backs up any...

In 2001, the Fed has lowered interest rates in a series of cuts, starting from 6.5 per cent at the end of 2000 to 2.0 per cent by early November. This paper asks, whether the Federal Reserve Bank has been surprising the markets, taking as given the conventional view about the effect of monetary...

This paper studies how the HP-Filter should be adjusted, when changing the frequency of observations. It complements the results of Baxter and King (1999) with an analytical analysis, demonstrating that the filter parameter should be adjusted by multiplying it with the fourth power of the...

A central bank digital currency, or CBDC, may provide an attractive alternative to traditional demand deposits held in private banks. When offering CBDC accounts, the central bank needs to confront classic issues of banking: conducting maturity transformation while providing liquidity to private...

We examine how a shift of bargaining power within households operating in a competitive market environment affects equilibrium allocation and welfare. If price effects are sufficiently small, then typically an individual benefits from an increase of bargaining power, necessarily to the detriment...

In the third decade of the 21st century, digitization, global events, challenges from authoritarian states, and difficulties of particular democracies to function properly confront democracy with a new series of challenges and opportunities that will force it to reinvent itself. The last decades...

We present a model of elections in which interest group donations allow candidates to shift policy positions. We show that if donations were prohibited, then a unique equilibrium regarding the platform choices of candidates would exist. Our game with financing of political campaigns exhibits two...

In this paper we examine the potential of democratic constitutions for the provision of divisible public goods in a large economy. Our main insights are as follows: When aggregate shocks are absent, the combination of the following rules yields first-best allocations: a supermajority rule, equal...

When politicians have lower discount factors than voters, democratic elections cannot sufficiently motivate politicians to undertake long-term socially beneficial projects. When politicians can offer incentive contracts which become effective upon reelection, the hierarchy of contracts and...

We examine financial intermediation when banks can offer deposit or loan contracts contingent on macroeconomic shocks. We show that the risk allocation is efficient if there is no workout of banking crises. In this case, banks will shift part of the risk to depositors. In contrast, under a...