This paper studies how household inequality shapes the effects of the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates on aggregate dynamics. To do so, we consider a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) model with an occasionally binding ZLB and solve for its fully non-linear stochastic...

Die Staatsanleihekäufe der EZB sind zu einem Fall für das Bundesverfassungsgericht geworden. Die Autoren des IW Köln argumentieren, dass das Outright-Monetary-Transactions-Programm noch innerhalb der Grenzen des EZB-Mandats liegt, aber wegen seiner Nachteile nur temporär eingesetzt werden...

Im Juni 2013 fand in Karlsruhe die mündliche Verhandlung im Hauptsacheverfahren Europäischer Stabilitätsmechanismus/Europäische Zentralbank statt. Dabei ging es im Kern um die Frage, ob das Outright-Monetary-Transactions-Programm der EZB mandatswidrig ist. Die ökonomische Logik, die zu dem...

Im September 2012 hatte EZB-Präsident Draghi angekündigt, dass die Europäische Zentralbank – wenn es notwendig ist – unbegrenzt Staatsanleihen von Krisenstaaten aufkauft, um die Refinanzierung ihrer Staatsschulden zu ermöglichen und ihre Zinsbelastung zu senken. Nach Auffassung des...

In responding to the extremely weak global economy after the financial crisis in 2008, many industrial nations have been considering or have already implemented negative nominal interest rate policy. This situation raises two important questions for monetary theories: (i) Given the widely held...

This paper analyses the major changes in both monetary and fiscal policy that have taken place over the past two decades and, within the limits of the existing empirical research, evaluates the overall costs and benefits for the OECD economies. The general findings for monetary policy are that,...

We show that if the central bank operates without commitment and faces constraints on its balance sheet, helicopter drops can be a useful stabilization tool during a liquidity trap. With commitment, even with balance sheet constraints, helicopter drops are irrelevant

This article deals with estimation of preferences of the Czech National Bank. New Keynesian small open economy model developed by Gali and Monacelli with optimal commitment monetary policy is considered in order to estimate them. The article uses the solution for optimal commitment policy...

We show that firms' nominal required returns to capital (i.e., their discount rates) are sticky with respect to expected inflation. Such nominally sticky discount rates imply that increases in expected inflation directly lower firms' real discount rates and thereby raise real investment. We...