DSGE-models have become important tools of analysis not only in academia but increasingly in the board rooms of central banks. The success of these models has much to do with the coherence of the intellectual framework it provides. The limitations of these models come from the fact that they...

The Generalized Calvo and the Generalized Taylor model of price and wage-setting are, unlike the standard Calvo and Taylor counter-parts, exactly consistent with the distribution of durations observed in the data. Using price and wage micro-data from a major euro-area economy (France), we...

We investigate the international linkages of inflation uncertainty in the G7. In a first step, we document that inflation uncertainty in the G7 is intertwined. Moreover, the degree of synchronization has increased during the recent two decades. Second, based on a Factor-Structural Vector...

This paper provides a model that can account for the almost uniform staggering of wage contracts in some countries as well as for the markedly nonuniform staggering in others. In the model, short and long contracts as well as long contracts concluded in different periods are strategic...

This paper explores whether the cost channel solves the price puzzle. We set-up a New Keynesian DSGE model and estimate it for the euro area by adopting a minimum distance approach. Our findings suggest that - under certain parameter restrictions which are not rejected by the data - the cost...

This paper evaluates whether macroeconomic uncertainty changes the impact of oil shocks on the oil price. Using a structural threshold VAR model, we endogenously identify different regimes of uncertainty in which we estimate the effects of oil demand and supply shocks. The results show that...

We compare the economic consequences of several types of oil shocks across a set of industrialized countries that are structurally very diverse with respect to the role of oil and other forms of energy in their economy. We find considerably different effects across countries, which crucially...

This brief exposition suggests that the Federal Reserve System temporarily guarantee a lower bound on stock prices in order to escape the current combination of liquidity trap and credit crunch. It shortly discusses reasons for this measure, consequences, and some alternatives. It is meant as a...