This thesis consists of four essays in empirical macroeconomics. The first three essays examine the conduct of monetary policy during a disinflationary and deflationary era, with the policy interest rates close to or at the zero bound. The questions of interest include the potency of the...

We examine developments in national contributions to euro area M3 for a sample of nine euro area countries during 1999–2005. We investigate the co-movements of national contributions with euro area M3 and discuss possible reasons for divergencies in growth rates of national contributions....

Despite sound theoretical foundations a drawback of the New Keynesian model is its inability to generate adequate persistence in the variables it seeks to explain. A common solution is to modify the model to include lagged variables. However, this is unsatisfactory as many such modifications...