A survey of the literature on asset price impacts on the real economy shows a much wider range of work on consumption and related wealth effects than on investment. The existence of wealth effects on consumption is little contested, but there remains an issue of whether different effects should...

Switzerland has had a long-standing surplus on its current account. But over the past 15 years that surplus has surged to levels unmatched by nearly any other OECD country at any point. This paper looks at the surplus from a balance of payments vantage point as well as from the optic of the...

Switzerland has had a long-standing surplus on its current account. But over the past 15 years that surplus has surged to levels unmatched by nearly any other OECD country at any point. This paper looks at the surplus from a balance of payments vantage point as well as from the optic of the...

The ability of discretionary fiscal policy to affect economic activity following shocks depends on how private agents react. This paper re-investigates the extent of possible offsetting private saving behaviour to fiscal policy changes. The results suggest that the private saving offset is...

This paper addresses the question of whether and how long-term financial trends may have modified the transmission mechanism from monetary policy decisions to economic activity. The focus is on longterm changes, abstracting from the disruptions created by the 2007-08 financial turmoil which are...

This paper addresses the question of whether and how monetary policy ease may lead to excesses in financial and real asset markets and ultimately result in financial dislocation. It presents evidence suggesting that periods when short-term interest rates have been persistently and significantly...

This paper analyses two factors which may cause cyclically-adjusted budget balances to give a misleading picture of underlying fiscal trends. It first explores the implications of recent large asset-market related fluctuations in government revenues for the measurement of structural budget...

Following Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments before Congress that the FOMC may ‘take a step down in the pace of asset purchases if economic improvement appears to be sustained’, US 10-year interest rates picked up sharply and gross capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) reversed....

Drawing on new empirical analysis of 30 years of structural reforms across the OECD, this paper sheds light on the impact of reforms over time, identifies the horizon over which their full effects materialise, and investigates whether such effects vary with prevailing economic conditions and...

This paper is concerned with how stylised differences in monetary policy transmission mechanisms and product and labour market rigidities between the US and euro-area economies affect their resilience to temporary shocks. To address this issue, a small general equilibrium model with long-run...