The advent and spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) increase potential output growth . It is uncertain to what extent and for how long they do so. We use the term "new economy" (NE) to describe the acceleration in potential output growth and the attendant and partly...

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...

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...

The real interest rate gap or IRG -the gap between the short term real interest rate and its "natural" level-, is a theoretical concept that has attracted much attention in central banks in recent years. This paper aims at clarifying its practical relevance for monetary policy in real time. For...

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...

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 compute optimized monetary policy rules for the ECB when the euro area economy is described by a small empirical macroeconomic model with a time-varying natural interest rate which is positively correlated with fluctuations in trend output growth. We investigate the consequences of both...

This paper incorporates banks as well as frictions in the market for bank capital into a standard New Keynesian model and considers the positive and normative implications of various financial shocks. It shows that the frictions matter significantly for the effects of the shocks and the...

In this article, we analyze the US short term real interest rate series for the last five decades in the framework of a M-SETAR model (Momentum - Self Exciting Threshold Auto-Regressive). With the aim of disentangling the non-linearity from the non-stationarity cases, we use threshold...

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...