The process of European monetary integration has prompted interest in the study of differences in financial systems and their consequences for monetary transmission mechanisms. This paper analyses the case of a monetary union composed of countries with heterogeneous "credit channels". In order...

Putnam (1993) argues that (i) center-northern Italy has developed faster than southern Italy because the former was better endowed with social capital; and (ii) that the endowments of social capital across Italian territories have been highly persistent over centuries. This paper provides an...

When a bank defaults or stops trading in the interbank market, both a liquidity shortage in the market itself and mounting trading losses should be anticipated. To gain more insight into the way a liquidity crisis spreads, we apply network topology techniques to monthly data on deposits...

This paper proposes a possible way of assessing the effect on interest rate dynamics of changes in the decision-making approach, in the communication strategy and in the operational framework of a central bank. Through a GARCH specification we show that the US and the euro area displayed a...

This paper studies the interaction between monetary and fiscal authorities while investors are coordinating on a speculative attack. The authorities want to achieve specific targets for output and inflation but also to avoid a regime change (i.e. sovereign default). They use the traditional...

Monetary growth targeting is often seen as an effective way of supporting macroeconomic stability. We scrutinize this property by checking whether multiplicity of equilibria, in the form of local indeterminacy (LI), can be both a possible and a plausible outcome of a basic model with an...

Empirical studies show that successful disinflations entail a period of output contraction. Using a medium-scale New Keynesian model, we compare the effects of disinflations of different speed and timing, implemented through either a money supply or an interest rate rule. In terms of...