This paper applies a life-cycle model with individual income uncertainty to investigate the determinants of credit to households. We show that the value of household credit to GDP ratio depends on the lending-deposit interest rate spread, individual income uncertainty, individual productivity...

Recent micro studies have documented extensive downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for job stayers in many OECD countries, but the effect on aggregate variables remains disputed. Using data for hourly nominal wages, we explore the existence of DNWR on wages at the industry level in 19 OECD...

This paper studies the dynamics of unemployment (u) and its natural rate (u*), with u* measured by real-time estimates for 29 countries from the OECD. We find strong evidence of hysteresis: an innovation in u causes u* to change in the same direction, and therefore has permanent effects. For our...

This paper assesses the Euro's influence upon European trade by estimating two different indicators. The first is the so-called “Rose Effect”, while the second is the “Border Effect”. The former measures how much a country within a currency union trades more with its partners than with...

This paper explores implications of climate change for fiscal policy by assessing the impact of large scale extreme weather events on changes in public budgets. We apply alternative measures for large scale extreme weather events and conclude that the budgetary impact of such events ranges...

This paper assesses the Euro's influence upon European trade by estimating two different indicators. The first is the so-called quot;Rose Effectquot;, while the second is the quot;Border Effectquot;. The former measures how much a country within a currency union trades more with its partners...

In this paper we assess to what extent in the existence of a financial crisis, government spending can contribute to mitigate economic downturns in the short run and whether such impact differs in crisis and non crisis times. We use panel analysis for a set of OECD and non-OECD countries for the...

This paper analyses the effects in terms of size and volatility of government revenue and spending on growth in OECD and EU countries. The results of the paper suggest that both variables are detrimental to growth. In particular, looking more closely at the effect of each component of government...