Well-functioning economic structures are key for resilient and prospering euro area economies. The global financial and sovereign debt crises exposed the limited resilience of the euro area's economic structures. Economic growth was masking underlying weaknesses in several euro area countries....

Since the advent of Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) models, countercyclical unemployment risk has been deemed an important amplification mechanism for business cycles shocks. Yet, the aggregate effects of such "unemployment fears" are hard to pin down. We thus revisit this issue in the...

This paper presents new evidence on the importance of insolvency frameworks for private sector debt deleveraging and for the resolution of non-performing loans (NPL). We construct an aggregate insolvency framework index (IFI), which is used as explanatory variable in the empirical analysis. By...

Standard New Keynesian (NK) models feature an optimal inflation target well below two percent, limited welfare losses from business cycle fluctuations and long-term monetary neutrality. We develop a NK framework with labour market frictions, endogenous productivity and downward wage rigidity...

This paper analyses how labour market heterogeneity affects unemployment, productivity and business cycle dynamics that are relevant for monetary policy. The model matches remarkably well the short and long run dynamics of skilled and unskilled workers. Skill mismatch and skill-specific labour...

We introduce a Bayesian Mixed-Frequency VAR model for the aggregate euro area labour market that features a structural identification via sign restrictions. The purpose of this paper is twofold: we aim at (i) providing reliable and timely forecasts of key labour market variables and (ii)...

The existence of nominal rigidities and inflation differentials between countries offers two of the main rationales for an inflation buffer in a monetary union where monetary policy is oriented towards an area-wide inflation objective. Evidence accumulated since 2003 suggests that nominal...

This paper studies export adjustment to negative shocks in currency unions. I consider the hitherto ignored role of trade costs and taxes in internal devaluations, which have been brought to the fore of international policy during the recent euro periphery crisis. Trade costs can limit the...

Since 2008, excess liquidity - defined as the sum of holdings of central bank reserves in excess of reserve requirements and holdings of equivalent central bank deposits - has tended to accumulate in specific euro area countries and in a small, slowly changing group of credit institutions....