In this article we estimate a time-varying " natural " rate of interest (TVNRI) for a synthetic euro area over the period 1979Q1-2002Q4 using a small backward-looking macroeconomic model, broadly following a methodology developed by Laubach and Williams (2003) for the United States. The Kalman...

This paper proposes two new coincident probabilistic cyclical indicators developed by the Bank of France in order to follow, on a monthly basis, the French economic activity. The first one is an indicator which aims at detecting the turning points of the acceleration cycle while the second one...

Using a Bayesian structural vector autoregression (TVP-SVAR) with time-varying parameters and volatility we investigate monetary policy in the United States, in particular its interaction with the formation of inflation expectations and the linkages between monetary policy, inflation...

We estimate the reaction function of monetary policy in the Euro area and derive the Taylor-type policy rule that a would-be ECB would have followed since the beginning of the European Monetary System (1979-2003). We first follow the standard GMM methodology developed by Clarida, Galí and...

We study the role of monetary policy when asset-price bubbles may form due to herd behavior in investment in an asset whose return is uncertain. To that aim, we build a simple general-equilibrium model whose agents are households, entrepreneurs, and a central bank. Entrepreneurs receive private...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the interconnectedness between macroeconomic and financial stability and has raised the question of whether and how to combine the corresponding main policy instruments (interest rate and bank-capital requirements). This paper offers a characterization...

For few years, the increasing size of available economic and financial databases has led econometricians to develop and adapt new methods in order to efficiently summarize information contained in those large datasets. Among those methods, dynamic factor models have known a rapid development and...

This paper illustrates how a parsimonious macro-finance model can be exploited to investigate the frequency-domain properties of debt service implied by various financing srategies. This orginal approach is valuable to public debt managers seeking to assess the fiscal-hedging properties of the...

This paper discusses the supply conditions for economic growth in terms of potential GDP estimated by the production function approach for France, Germany and Italy for the 1986:2003 period. The aim of this study is twofold: first, we keep a consistent framework as regards national account...

We study the business cycles properties of the four largest European economies in the wake of the recent recession episodes. The analysis is based on the factors estimated from a multi-country and multi-sector data rich environment. We measure alikeness of business cycles by studying the...