We develop an OLG model aimed at explaining the joint determination of housing prices, rents, and interest rates, in an environment featuring a positive home ownership bias and individual borrowing limits that generate a mismatch between desired and available funds to finance housing purchases....

We examine the role of money in three environments: the New Keynesian model with separable utility and static money demand; a nonseparable utility variant with habit formation; and a version with adjustment costs for holding real balances. The last two variants imply forward-looking behavior of...

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...

We study the extent of macroeconomic convergence/divergence among euro area countries. Our analysis focuses on four variables (unemployment, inflation, relative prices and the current account), and seeks to uncover the role played by monetary union as a convergence factor by using non-euro...

We study the extent of macroeconomic convergence/divergence among euro area countries. Our analysis focuses on four variables (unemployment, inflation, relative prices and the current account), and seeks to uncover the role played by monetary union as a convergence factor by using non-euro...

This article studies the extent of macroeconomic convergence/divergence among euro area countries. The analysis focuses on four variables (unemployment, inflation, relative prices, and the current account), and seeks to uncover the role played by monetary union as a convergence factor by using...

We study the extent of macroeconomic convergence/divergence among euro area countries. Our analysis focuses on four variables (unemployment, inflation, relative prices and the current account), and seeks to uncover the role played by monetary union as a convergence factor by using non-euro...

We construct a measure of Euro area cyclical efficiency, following the approach developed in Galí, Gertler and López-Salido (2002). Our measure –which we call "the gap"– corresponds to the inverse of price over social marginal cost. Here we present a time series of this gap for the Euro...

We provide evidence on the fit of the New Phillips Curve (NPC) for the Euro area over the period 1970-1998, and use it as a tool to compare the characteristics of European inflation dynamics with those observed in the U.S. We also analyse the factors underlying inflation inertia by examining the...

Recent evidence suggests that consumption rises in response to an increase in government spending. That finding cannot be asily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard new Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb consumers. We show how...