We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model for the positive and normativeanalysis of macroprudential policies. Optimizing financial intermediaries allocate theirscarce net worth together with funds raised from saving households across two lendingactivities, mortgage and corporate lending....

This paper uses Eurobarometer survey data from 26 EU countries to evaluate whether the general public cares about financial stability and imbalances over and above their effects on macroeconomic variables such as unemployment and inflation. I confirm previous results in the literature that life...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country’s prosperity. The paper focuses on olitical events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy’s financial...

We study how the structure of housing finance affects the transmission of monetary policy shocks. We document three main facts: first, the features of residential mortgage markets differ markedly across industrialized countries; second, and ac- cording to a wide range of indicators, the...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country's prosperity. This paper focuses on Italy's troubled politics over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy's financial...

This paper sets out to investigate the role of additive uncertainty under plausible non-standard central bank loss functions over future inflation. Building on a substantial body of evidence in the economic psychology literature, this paper postulates (i) period-by-period loss functions that are...

We study the role of institutional characteristics of mortgage markets in affecting the strength and timing of the effects of monetary policy shocks on house prices and consumption in a sample of OECD countries. We document three facts: (1) there is significant divergence in the structure of...

"Economic and monetary union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

This paper takes a close look at the 'behavioural finance' explanations of the equity premium puzzle, namely myopic loss aversion (Benartzi and Thaler, 1995) and disappointment aversion (Ang, Bekaert and Liu, 2000). The paper proposes a simple specification of loss and disappointment aversion...

This paper endeavours to provide a comprehensive analysis of the nature and the possible importance of “global excess liquidity”, a concept which has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we present some conceptual discussion on...