Structural VAR studies disagree with narrative accounts about the history of monetary policy disturbances. We investigate whether employing the narrative monetary shock account as a proxy variable in a VAR model aligns both shock series. We quantify the extent to which the disagreement still...

What are the effects of a higher central bank inflation target on the burden of real public debt? Several recent proposals have suggested that even a moderate increase in the inflation target can have a pronounced effect on real public debt. We consider this question in a New Keynesian model...

We tackle two questions in this paper: In the sovereign debt crisis, what moves the euro area inflation outlook and has the firm anchoring of medium to long-term inflation expectations been touched? Deriving densities from a new data set on options on the euro area harmonized index of consumer...

We analyse the adjustment of retail and services prices in a period of low inflation, using a set of individual price data from the German Consumer Price Index which covers the years 1998 to 2003. We strong find evidence of time- and state-dependent price adjustment. Most importantly, the...

This paper studies the importance of money for inflation in the euro area. An inflation equation is derived from a small model that combines the supply and demand for money with a Phillips curve and the assumption that inflation expectations develop adaptively. The model's solution attributes an...

This paper presents original evidence on price setting in the euro area at the individual level. We use micro data on consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI) prices, as well as survey information. Our main findings are: (i) prices in the euro area are sticky and more so than in the US; (ii) there is...

In this paper we incorporate a labor market with matching frictions and wage rigidities into the New Keynesian business cycle model. In particular, we analyze the effect of a monetary policy shock and investigate how labor market frictions affect the transmission process of monetary policy. The...

Regarding inflation as being a monetary phenomenon in the long-run is a widely-held view in modern macro economics. We analyse this topic by means of a P-star model. Based on the quantity theory of money, this approach explains inflation via a supposed equilibrium price level (P-star), which...

In recent macroeconomic theory, relative price variability (RPV) generates the central distortions of inflation. This paper provides first evidence on the empirical relation between inflation and RPV in the euro area focusing on threshold effects of inflation. We find that expected inflation...

This paper reviews theory and evidence of the welfare effects of inflation from a costbenefit perspective. Basic models and selected empirical results are discussed. Historically, in assessing the welfare effects of inflation, the distortion of money demand played a prominent role. More...