Can the evolution of public debt be predicted from its determinants? While the recovery programs undertaken during the 2008 crisis have led to a big takeoff in public debt ratios, the factors likely to curb its upward spiraling dynamic are subject to considerable uncertainty and fuel debate...

The question of reducing public debt is at the heart of the current debates in France where the level of debt ratio amounted to 86% of the GDP in 2011. In this paper, we examine how the primary balance, the GDP growth rate, the real interest rate and the inflation rate have influenced the...

Monetary union can benefit countries suffering from policy credibility problems if it eliminates the inflation bias and also allows for more efficient management of certain shocks. But it also carries costs as some stabilization may be feasible even in the absence of credibility, and this may be...

We document the presence of both small and large price changes in individual price records from the CPI in France and the US. After correcting for measurement error and cross-section heterogeneity, the size-distribution of price changes has a positive excess kurtosis. We propose an analytical...

In an otherwise unique-equilibrium model, agents are segmented into a few informational islands according to the signal they receive about others' expectations. Even if agents perfectly observe fundamentals, rational-exuberance equilibria (REX) can arise as they put weight on expectational...

We study the liquidity allocation among European banks around the Lehman Brothers’ insolvency using a novel dataset of all interbank loans settled via the Eurosystem’s payment system TARGET2. Following the Lehman insolvency, lenders in the overnight segment become sensitive to counterparty...

This article deals with the estimation of a time-varying coefficients equation with endogenous regressors. A non-parametric approach is proposed, combining the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with the smoothing splines litterature as in Hodrick and Prescott (1981). This new method is used to...

We set up a model where asset price bubbles due to risk shifting can be moderated by capital requirements. However, imperfect information about the ratio of required capital, or, in the context of the sub-prime crisis, the extent of regulatory arbitrage, introduces uncertainty about the risk...

In this paper, we try to illustrate the interest of the Bayesian approach for the evaluation of economic policies, often realised by analysing the response of the economy to a standard shock. We present a Stochastic Dynamic General Equilibrium model for the euro area. The Bayesian estimation...

What factors cause banks to lend to the private sector in a bank-based financial system like the ones in place in Europe? In this paper we compare a traditional demand oriented model to a non-traditional capital budgeting model of bank lending based on movements in the equity cost of capital for...