Both interest rates and inflation rates in the Euro area have reached levels dangerously close to zero. By the strategy of quantitative easing the ECB has been providing ample liquidity – yet without lasting success. Several asymmetries in policy transmission and monetary policy making have...

This paper uses panel data for 19 OECD countries and finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...