This study uses the Luxembourg Income Study to examine the size of the middle class across several less developed American nations. One main finding is that in the mid 2000s the size of the middle class in Latin America does not seem to depend on demographic factors. A second finding is that, in...

In most OECD countries the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. This paper analyzes whether and to what extent taxes and social transfers have contributed to this trend. Has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time? The paper contributes to...

This article analyzes the determinants of market income distribution and governmental redistribution. The dependent variables are LIS data on market income inequality (measured by the Gini index) for households with a head aged 25 to 59 and the percent reduction in the Gini index by taxes and...

This paper explores whether there are systematic patterns as to when members of the decision-making committees of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank communicate with the public, and under what circumstances such communication has the ability to move financial...

This paper documents a new stylized fact of the greater macroeconomic stability of the U.S. economy over the last two decades. Using 131 monthly time series, three popular statistical methods and the forecasts of the Federal Reserve’s Greenbook and the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we...

This paper examines bond and stock market volatility reactions in the euro area and the US following their respective economies’ monetary policy decisions, over a uniform sample period (April 1999 to May 2006). For this purpose, intraday data on the US and euro area bond and stock markets are...

This paper presents a systematic empirical relationship between money and subsequent prices and output, using US, euro area and Swiss data since the 1960-70s. Monetary developments, unlike interest rate stance measures, are shown to provide qualitative and quantitative information on subsequent...

Using annual data from 14 European Union countries, plus Canada, Japan and the United States, we evaluate the macroeconomic effects of public and private investment through VAR analysis. From impulse response functions, we are able to assess the extent of crowding-in or crowding-out of both...

Advances in the development of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models towards medium-scale structural frameworks with satisfying data coherence have considerably enhanced the range of analytical tools well-suited for monetary policy evaluation. The present paper intends to make a...

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression approach. We build on a recursive identification scheme, but we: (i) include the feedback from government debt (ii); look at the impact on the composition of output; (iii) assess the...