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 dieser Studie werden die makroökonomischen Auswirkungen verschiedener Fiskalkonsolidierungspläne von Ländern der Eurozone analysiert. Dafür wird ein theoretisch fundiertes makroökonomisches Modell genutzt. Die Eignung des Modells und die Wichtigkeit verschiedener Features wie...

The recent decline in euro area inflation has triggered new calls for additional monetary stimulus by the ECB in order to counter the threat of a self-reinforcing deflation and recession spiral. This note reviews the available evidence on inflation expectations, output gaps and other factors...

The ECB’s recently launched Expanded Asset Purchasing Programme is similar to the quantitative easing programmes undertaken by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. While theory suggests that quantitative easing can stimulate economic growth and spur inflation via...

The Euro Area is characterized by little variation in unemployment and strongly procyclical labor productivity. We capture both characteristics in a New Keynesian business cycle model with labor search frictions, where labor can vary along three margins: employment, hours, and effort. We...

Following a weak start into 2015, the global economy is expected to pick up again in the course of this year. Average annual world output growth will nevertheless remain sluggish at 3.4 percent on a purchasing power parity weighted basis, before accelerating modestly to 3.8 percent next year....