Standard theory predicts that financial integration leads to a lower degree of business cycle synchronization. Surprisingly, cross-country studies find the opposite. Our contribution is to document the theoretically predicted negative effect of financial integration on business cycle...

We construct a unique dataset of legislative reforms in merger control legislation that occurred in nineteen industrial countries in the period 1987-2004, and test the economic impact of these changes on firms’ stock prices. In line with the standard monopolistic hypothesis, we find that the...

I propose a simple theory of intertwined business and financial cycles, where financial regulation both optimally responds to and influences the cycles. In this model, banks do not internalize the effect of their credit expansion on other banks’ expected bankruptcy costs, which leads to...

Our paper examines the effect of recent regulatory proposals mandating the deferral of bonus payments and claw-back clauses for compensation contracts in the financial sector. We study a multi-task setting in which a bank employee, the agent, privately chooses (deal or customer) acquisition...

Following the financial crisis of 2008/9, there has been renewed interest in what Greenwald and Stiglitz dubbed ‘pecuniary externalities’. Two that affect borrowers and lenders balance sheets in pro-cyclical fashion are described, along with measures that might help curb their destabilising...

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Using the Smets and Wouters (2007) model of the U.S. economy, we find that the role of the output gap should be equal to or even more important than that of inflation when designing a simple loss function to represent household welfare. Moreover, we document that a...

Several recent studies imply that the response of national saving to fiscal policy is non-monotonic. In this paper, we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non-monotonic responses arise: one refers to a sample of OECD countries, as in previous studies, and one to a...

In this Paper, I analyse the pros and cons of implementing structural reforms of the labour market in booms versus recessions, in light of considerations of social efficiency, political viability, and macroeconomic fine-tuning. While the optimal timing of a reform depends on the relative...

This 2003 Institute for Fiscal Studies Lecture addresses two sets of issues relevant to current and prospective future E(M)U members: the consequences of the Stability and Growth Pact for fiscal-financial sustainability and macroeconomic stability, and some risks associated with operational...

Monetary policy is sometimes formulated in terms of a target level of inflation, a fixed time horizon and a constant interest rate that is anticipated to achieve the target at the specified horizon. These requirements lead to constant interest rate (CIR) instrument rules. Using the standard New...