The paper seeks to assess the current monetary policy stance of the European Central Bank (ECB). To do so, it analyses factors driving the inflation dynamics in the euro area (EA) and their potential persistence, drawing comparisons with the inflation drivers and policy response in the United...

We critically review the recent literature on currency unions and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic effects of the euro. In particular, and in contrast with estimates of the...

This paper develops a new instrumental-variable (IV) approach to estimate the effects of different exchange rate regimes on bilateral outcomes. The basic idea is that the characteristics of the exchange rate regime between two countries (exchange rate variability, fixed or float, autonomous or...

As the number of independent countries increases and their economies become more integrated, we would expect to observe more multi-country currency unions. This paper explores the pros and cons for different countries to adopt as an anchor the dollar, the euro, or the yen. Although there appear...

Shifts in the extent of competition, which affect markup ratios, are possible sources of aggregate business fluctuations. Markups are countercyclical, and booms are times at which the economy operates more efficiently. We begin with a real model in which markup ratios correspond to the prices of...

Emerging economies, particularly those dependent on commodity exports, are prone to highly disruptive economic cycles. This paper proposes a small open economy model for a net commodity exporter to quantitatively study the triggers of these cycles. The economy consists of two sectors, one of...

In this article, we identify and illustrate some shortcomings of the poisson command in Stata. Specifically, we point out that the command fails to check for the existence of the estimates, and we show that it is very sensitive to numerical problems. While these are serious problems that may...

We critically review the recent literature on currency unions and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic effects of the euro. In particular, and in contrast with estimates of the...

In this note we identify and illustrate some shortcomings of the poisson com- mand in STATA. Specifically, we point out that the command fails to check for the existence of the estimates and show that it is very sensitive to numerical problems. While these are serious problems that may prevent...

We extend the simulation results in Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006, The log of gravity, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88, 641-658) by considering a novel data-generating process. Our results confirm that the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator is generally well behaved, even...