This paper analyzes the impact of strained government finances on macroeconomic stability and the transmission of fiscal policy. Using a variant of the model by Curdia and Woodford (2009), we study a 'sovereign risk channel' through which sovereign default risk raises funding costs in the...

The risk premium in the US stock market has fallen far below its historic level, which Shiller (2000) attributes to a bubble driven by psychological factors. As an alternative explanation, we point out that the observed risk premium may be reduced by one-sided intervention policy on the part of...

We study the bond yield conundrum in a macro-finance framework. Building upon a flexible and non-structural macro-finance model, we test the hypothesis that the bond yield conundrum is connected to various sources of uncertainty in the financial markets. Moreover we explicitly test for the role...

This paper surveys the evidence on the effectiveness of monetary transmission in developing countries. We summarize the arguments for expecting the bank lending channel to be the dominant means of monetary transmission in such countries, and present a simple model that suggests why this channel...

In a country with high probability of default, higher interest rates may render the currency less attractive if sovereign default is costly. This paper develops that intuition in a simple model and estimates the effect of changes in interest rates on the exchange rate in Brazil using data from...

This paper reviews the monetary transmission mechanism in low income countries (LICs). We use monetary transmission in advanced and emerging markets as a benchmark to identify aspects of the transmission mechanism that may operate differently in LICs. In particular, we focus on the effects of...

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of structural breaks in the exchange rates of European transition economies. The Vogelsang (1997) testing procedure is used. The technique allows for the detection of a break at an unknown date in the trend function of a dynamic univariate time...