The global financial crisis has lead to a renewed interest in discretionary fiscal stimulus. Advocates of discretionary measures emphasize that government spending can stimulate additional private spending — the Keynesian multiplier effect. Thus, we investigate whether the spending package...

In this paper we investigate the comparative properties of empirically-estimated monetary models of the U.S. economy. We make use of a new database of models designed for such investigations. We focus on three representative models: the Christiano, Eichenbaum, Evans (2005) model, the Smets and...

In the New-Keynesian model, optimal interest rate policy under uncertainty is formulated without reference to monetary aggregates as long as certain standard assumptions on the distributions of unobservables are satisfied. The model has been criticized for failing to explain common trends in...

Research with Keynesian-style models has emphasized the importance of the output gap for policies aimed at controlling inflation while declaring monetary aggregates largely irrelevant. Critics, however, have argued that these models need to be modified to account for observed money growth and...

We estimate the long- and short-run relationship between top income and wealth shares for France and the US since 1913. We find strong evidence for a long-run cointegration relationship governed by relative saving rates at the top. For both countries, we estimate a decline in the relative saving...

We estimate the long- and short-run relationship between top income and wealth shares for France and the US since 1913. We find strong evidence for a long-run cointegration relationship governed by relative saving rates at the top. For both countries, we estimate a decline in the relative saving...

The purpose of the paper is to develop a Regime-Switching Global Vector Autoregressive (RS-GVAR) model. The RS-GVAR model allows for recurring or non-recurring structural changes in all or a subset of countries. It can be used to generate regime-dependent impulse response functions which are...

The purpose of the paper is to develop a Regime-Switching Global Vector Autoregressive (RS-GVAR) model. The RS-GVAR model allows for recurring or non-recurring structural changes in all or a subset of countries. It can be used to generate regime-dependent impulse response functions which are...

We study optimal monetary policy design in a simple model that deviates from the linear-quadratic paradigm and provides a rationale for the practice of inflation zone targeting. We show that the presence of either zone-quadratic preferences or a zone-linear relationship between inflation and...

In this paper we estimate a small model of the euro area to be used as a laboratory for evaluating the performance of alternative monetary policy strategies. We focus on the relationship between output and inflation and investigate the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to Taylor...