According to Becker (1968) it is best to use very high fines and low inspection probabilities to deter traffic accidents because inspection is costly. This paper uses a political economy model to analyse the choice of the fine and the inspection probability. There are two lobby groups: the...

This paper uses a formal model to examine the welfare gains from a marginal increase in the price of on-street parking. The benefits of such a policy are shown to depend on the improvement in search externalities in the on-street parking market itself, plus effects on other distorted urban...

This paper uses reprojection to develop a benchmark to assess ECB monetary policy since January 1999, the start of EMU. We first estimate an essentially affine term structure model for the German SWAP yield curve between 1987:04-1998:12. The German monetary policy is then reprojected onto the...

The topic covered in this paper is the performance of different monetary policy rules thought to be used as a guideline in practical policymaking. In this respect, different rules are estimated using alternative econometrics techniques. A comparative analysis based on the ability of the rules in...

Multinational companies and national governments pay considerable attention to labor costs and labor productivity differentials across countries. This paper analyzes total and unit labor differentials for a group of European and non-European countries in the 1960-1998 period. It deals with (i)...

The increased mobility of capital of the last few decades creates new challenges for the macroeconomic policies of the nation-states. In this paper we analyse some of these challenges. Contrary to what is often alleged, increased capital mobility does not necessarily increase the need for...

We present and estimate a parsimonious multi-factor affine term structure model for joint bond markets. We extend the standard affine models by focusing on joint markets and by incorporating the exchange rate dynamics in the estimation procedure. Estimation is done by means of a Kalman filter...

We present and estimate a parsimonious continuous-time multi-factor affine term structure model for the joint term structure dynamics of interest rates across countries. We extend the standard affine models by focusing on joint markets and by incorporating the exchange rate dynamics in the...

The paper explicitly derives the conditional distribution of exchange rates and interest rate differentials in the target zone model of Krugman (1991). The exact conditional density function is subsequently utilized in maximum likelihood estimation in which narrower undeclared bands within...

In this paper, we present a stylized continuous time model integrating the macroeconomy and the bond markets. We use this framework to estimate (real) interest rate policy rules using information contained in both macroeconomic variables (i.e. output and inflation) and in the term structure of...