Inflation rates in a number of OECD follow a common trend over the past four decades: inflation starts out low in the 1960s, rises for a time before peaking in the 1970s or early 1980s, and then falls back to initial levels. This similarity in the behavior of trend inflation suggests that any...

The ECB Working Paper Series seeks to disseminate economic research on issues that are relevant to the various tasks and functions of the ECB. The Series invites submissions of research work by ECB staff and visitors. Papers by researchers not affiliated with the ECB may also be considered for...

This paper studies a overlapping generations economy with capital where limitedcommunication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for…at money. We assume a production function with a knowledge-externality (Romer-style) that nests economies with endogenous growth (AK...

The Friedman rule, a widely studied prescription for monetary policy, is optimal inTownsend’s turnpike model of money; it is not so in the overlapping generations versionof his stochastic relocation model of money. We investigate these monetary models inthe light of this disparity. To that...

In this paper, we explore the connection between optimal monetary policy and heterogeneityamong agents. We study a standard monetary economy with two types of agents inwhich the stationary distribution of money holdings is non-degenerate. Sans type-specific fiscalpolicy, we show that the...

In this paper, we argue that the observed di¤erence in the cost of intraday and overnightliquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interestcharged on overnight liquidity a¤ects output while the cost of intraday liquidity onlyaffects the distribution of...

Monetary Policy Committees differ in the way the interest rate proposal is preparedand presented in the policy meeting. In this paper we show analytically how differentarrangements could affect the voting behaviour of individual MPC members andtherefore policy outcomes. We then apply our results...

Existing work on wage bargaining (as exemplified by Cukierman and Lippi, 2001) typicallypredicts more aggressive wage setting under monetary union. This insight has not beenconfirmed by the EMU experience, which has been characterised by wage moderation,thereby eliciting criticism from Posen and...

We study several popular monetary models which generate a non-degenerate stationary distribution of money holdings. Across these environments, our principal finding is as follows: a monetary policy that sets long run nominal interest rates to zero (the Friedman rule) does not typically maximize...

Using the Consensus Economics dataset with individual expertforecasts from G7 countries we investigate determinants of disagreement (crosssectionaldispersion of forecasts) about six key economic indicators. Disagreementabout real variables (GDP, consumption, investment and unemployment)has a...