This paper develops and estimates a game-theoretical model of inflation targeting where the central banker's preferences are asymmetric around the targeted rate. In particular, positive deviations from the target can be weighted more, or less, severely than negative ones in the central banker's...

This paper analyzes the Spanish monetary system from 1856, when the Bank of Spain was created, to 1874, when it was awarded the monopoly of emission. This period was characterized by the emergence of an unregulated banking system, with multiple banks of issue entitled to emit bank notes. We...

Public deficit figures are subject to revisions, as most macroeconomic aggregates are. Nevertheless, in the case of Europe, the latter could be particularly worrisome given the role of fiscal data in the functioning of EU’s multilateral surveillance rules. Adherence to such rules is judged...

I model the purchase behavior of main and secondary housing by Spanish households using the panel sample from the first two waves of the Spanish household finance survey (EFF). I estimate discrete hazard models using retrospective and within-period purchase sequences. I also estimate an (S,s)...

This study investigates the pricing behaviour of firms in the euro area on the basis of surveys conducted by nine Eurosystem national central banks. Overall, more than 11,000 firms participated in the survey. The results are very robust across countries. Firms operate in monopolistically...

In this paper we integrate Schumpeterian endogenous growth into a general equilibrium framework. By explicitely modelling the innovation and technology adoption process we are able to match some stylized economic facts such as entry rates and survival times of firms in the U.S. economy or the...

In this paper we present a simple, theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency associated with business fluctuations. We decompose this indicator, which we refer to as “the gap”, into two constituent parts: a price markup and a wage markup, and show that the...

This paper addresses the issue of measuring the NAIRU in the Spanish economy. We implement some of the procedures proposed in the literature to estimate the NAIRU, describing their advantages and disadvantages. Our analysis shows that these alternative approaches provide significantly different...

One of the most salient feature of the Spanish housing market, compared to other European economies, is its relatively low rental share. This may be partly attributed to the existence of fiscal distortions in Spain favoring ownership. In this paper, we simulate the potential efects of different...

We construct a measure of Euro area cyclical efficiency, following the approach developed in Galí, Gertler and López-Salido (2002). Our measure –which we call "the gap"– corresponds to the inverse of price over social marginal cost. Here we present a time series of this gap for the Euro...