This paper argues that a stable broad money demand for the euro area over the period 1980–2011 can be obtained by modelling cross border international portfolio allocation. As a consequence, model-based excess liquidity measures, namely the difference between actual M3 growth (net of the...

Nowadays a considerable amount of information on the behaviour of the economy is readily available, in the form of large datasets of macroeconomic variables. Central bankers can be expected to base their decisions on this very large information set. Yet the academic profession has shown a clear...

Within a standard model of monetary delegation we show that the optimal linear inflation contract performs strictly better than the optimal inflation target when there is uncertainty about the central banker’s preferences. The optimal combination of a contract and a target performs best, and...

There is substantial consensus in the literature that positive uncertainty shocks predict a slowdown of economic activity. However, using US data since 1950 we show that the macroeconomic response pattern to stock market volatility shocks has changed substantially over time. The negative...

This Paper analyses the decision of a government facing electoral uncertainty to implement structural reforms in the presence of fiscal restraints similar to the Stability and Growth Pact. We provide suggestive evidence that structural reforms - in particular labour market reforms - may lead to...

We explore the implications of monetary unification for real interest rates and (relative) public debt levels. The adoption of a common monetary policy renders the risk-return characteristics of the participating countries more similar, so that the substitutability of their public debt increases...

We show how a stability pact based on deficit sanctions eliminates the exacerbation of debt accumulation that may arise from monetary unification. Moreover, by making sanctions contingent upon the economic situation of countries, the stability pact provides for risk sharing. Differences in...

Available studies on asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism within Europe are invariably based on macro-economic evidence: such evidence is abundant but often contradictory. This paper takes a different route by using micro-economic data. We use the information contained in the...

It is widely argued that Europe's unified monetary policy calls for international coordination at the fiscal level. We survey the issues involved with such coordination of fiscal policy as a demand management tool and we use a simple model to investigate the circumstances under which...

We propose an approach to identify independently the parameters describing the structure of the economy from those describing central bank preferences. We first estimate a parsimonious structural model for US inflation, US output-gap and the world commodity price index. We then proceed to the...