In this paper, the role of the financial position of private agents in the transmission of monetary policy (the balance-sheet channel) is explored. To the extent that official interest rates are able to affect the market value and the income flows of certain categories of financial instruments...

Business cycle properties under different monetary policy rules are examined in a variety of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (the real business cycle models, the nominal wage contract models with different length of contracts, and the monopolistic competition models with different...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I study how the proportion of fixed and variable-rate mortgages in an economy can affect the way shocks are propagated. Second, I analyze optimal implementable simple monetary policy rules and the welfare implications of this proportion. I develop and...

We analyze optimal monetary policy in a model with two distinct financial frictions. First, borrowing is subject to collateral constraints. Second, credit flows are intermediated by monopolistically competitive banks, thus giving rise to endogenous lending spreads. We show that, up to a second...

Recent treatments of the issue of a zero floor on nominal interest rates have been subject to some important methodological limitations. These include the assumption of perfect foresight or the introduction of the zero lower bound as an initial condition or a constraint on the variance of the...

This paper aims at analysing the impact of household borrowing on consumption. These variables are modelled jointly in a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) where labour income, wealth variables and nominal interest rates are also included. The main estimation result is that deviations of...

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...

By how much do employed households reduce their consumption when the aggregate unemployment rate rises? In Spain during the Great Recession a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate was related to a strong drop in household consumption of more than 0.7% per equivalent adult. This...

In this paper we provide an overview of the growth model in China and its prospects, taking a medium-run to long-run perspective. Our main conclusions are as follows. First, the still prevailing producer-biased model of managed capitalism in China tends to engender, as an inherent byproduct,...

We examine the role of money in three environments: the New Keynesian model with separable utility and static money demand; a nonseparable utility variant with habit formation; and a version with adjustment costs for holding real balances. The last two variants imply forward-looking behavior of...