We confront the notion that flexible rates insulate a country from external disturbances with new evidence on spillovers from euro-area shocks to neighboring countries. We find that in response to euro-area shocks, spillovers are not smaller, and currency movements not significantly larger, in...

Der Dienstwagen zur privaten Nutzung ist eine der häufigsten Nebenleistungen zum regulären Einkommen in Deutschland. Die sehr günstige steuerliche Behandlung dieses geldwerten Vorteils trägt wesentlich zur Attraktivität dieses Bezahlungsmodells bei. Die vorliegende Studie wurde im Auftrag...

We study optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model where occasional declines in agents' confidence can give rise to persistent liquidity trap episodes. Unlike in the case of fundamental-driven liquidity traps, there is no straightforward recipe for mitigating the welfare costs...

The notion that flexible exchange rates insulate a country from foreign shocks is well grounded in theory, from the classics (Meade, 1951; Friedman 1953), to the more recent open economy literature (Obstfeld and Rogo, 2000). We confront it with new evidence from Europe. Specifically, we study how...