The purpose of this paper is to cast a new light on the present state of global current account imbalances. As a first step, we compute the world distribution of current account balances, in order to highlight its historically-unprecedented pattern, both in terms of the size of imbalances, its...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Due to the unobservability of the new credit production, most of the empirical loan market studies use, instead, the observable credit stock. This substitution has been pointed out to be likely to generate biases (e.g. see Lown and Peristiani (1996)). In this paper, we show that under quite...

Due to the unobservability of the new credit production, most of the empirical loan market studies use, instead, the observable credit stock. This substitution has been pointed out to be likely to generate biases (e.g. see Lown and Peristiani (1996)). In this paper, we show that under quite...

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...