The recent rise of excess liquidity in the United States and in the euro zone did not result in a resurgence of inflation. Excess liquidity, rather than heading towards the market of consumer goods, could have moved towards the asset markets. In the data covering the period going from 1980 to...

The recent boom in housing markets of most developed economies has spurred criticism that inflation targeting central banks may have neglected the build-up of financial imbalances. This paper provides a formal empirical test of such claims, using a standard program evaluation methodology to...

This paper shows how interbank market fragmentation disrupts monetary policy implementation. Fragmentation is defined as the situation where some banks are cut from the interbank loan market. The paper incorporates fragmentation in an otherwise standard theoretical model of monetary policy...

Using intra-day data, we assess the impact of the press release on euro area monetary data on the different segments of the euro area yield curve. For this purpose, we estimate a relation between the "news" or "surprise" in the released data for annual M3 growth and the move in the interest...

The paper provides an overview of recent asset price developments in France in the light of analytical research carried out at the Banque de France. Like in many other countries, historically low interest rates have boosted asset price dynamics in France over recent years. The paper attempts to...

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...

Recent empirical literature documents that unexpected changes in the nominal interest rates have a significant effect on stock prices: a 25-basis point increase in the Fed funds rate is associated with an immediate decrease in broad stock indices that may range from 0.5 to 2.3 percent, followed...

We address in this paper the issue of leadership when two governments provide public goods to their constituencies with cross border externalities as both public goods are valued by consumers in both countries. We study a timing game between two different countries: before providing public...

This paper studies the inflationary implications of interest bearing regional debt in a monetary union. Is this debt simply backed by future taxation with no inflationary consequences? Or will the circulation of region debt induce monetization by a central bank? We argue here that both outcomes...

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy rules in a fiscal federation, such as the European Union. The focus of the analysis is the interaction between the fiscal policy of member countries (regions) and the monetary authority. Each of the countries structures its fiscal policy...