Euro-area accession caused boom-bust cycles in several catching-up economies. Declining interest rates and easier financing conditions fuelled spending and worsened the current account balance. Over time inflation deteriorated external competitiveness and lowered domestic demand, turning the...

We propose a theoretical framework to reconcile episodes of V-shaped and L-shaped recovery, en- compassing the behaviour of the U.S. economy before and after the Great Recession. In a DSGE model with endogenous growth, negative demand shocks destroy productive capacity, moving GDP to a lower...

This paper analyses how the financial crisis has affected task of meeting the Maastricht Criteria for the eight Central and Eastern European Countries which have yet to join the euro. It identifies the channels by which the crisis has fed through to deficits, debt, interest rates and inflation...

This paper reports the results of a survey of former members of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, which sought their views on monetary policy communication practices, the related challenges and the road ahead. Pronounced differences across the respondent groups are rare,...

In this paper I develop a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which features three different types of representative agents (THRANK): the poor hand-to- mouth, the wealthy hand-to-mouth and the non-hand-to mouth households. Compared to a full-scale HANK model, this model is...

Central banks have intensified their communication with non-experts - an endeavour which some have argued is bound to fail. This paper studies English and German Twitter traffic about the ECB to understand whether its communication is received by non-experts and how it affects their views. It...

The rise of bond financing in EuropeUsing large panel data of public and private firms, this paper dissects the growth of bond financing in the Euro Area through the lens of the cross-section of issuers. In recent years, the composition of bond issuers has shifted, with the entry of many smaller...

This paper analyses the incidence and severity of sudden stops in euro area countries before and after the introduction of the ECB's asset purchase programmes. We define sudden stops as abrupt declines in private net financial inflows, i.e. total flows adjusted for EU and IMF loans and changes...

This paper proposes an econometric framework for nowcasting the monetary policy stance and decisions of the European Central Bank (ECB) exploiting the ow of conventional and textual data that become available between two consecutive press conferences. Decompositions of the updated nowcasts into...

Standard New Keynesian (NK) models feature an optimal inflation target well below two percent, limited welfare losses from business cycle fluctuations and long-term monetary neutrality. We develop a NK framework with labour market frictions, endogenous productivity and downward wage rigidity...