This paper compares the depth of the Recent Crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the Recent Crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

Output gap estimates at the current edge are subject to severe revisions. This study analyzes whether monetary aggregates can be used to improve the reliability of early output gap estimates as proposed by several theoretical models. A real-time experiment shows that real M1 can improve output...

This paper reviews recent approaches to modeling the labour market and assessestheir implications for in‡ation dynamics through both their e¤ect on marginalcost and on price-setting behaviour. In a search and matching environment, weconsider the following modeling setups: right-to-manage...

In this paper we present an extension of the Taylor model with staggered wages inwhich wage-setting is also influenced by reference norms (i.e. by benchmark wages).We show that reference norms can considerably increase the persistence of inflationand the extent of real wage rigidity but that...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of price and wage adjustment inEuropean firms and on the extent of nominal rigidities. It uses a unique dataset collectedthrough a firm-level survey conducted in a broad range of countries and covering varioussectors. Several conclusions are drawn...

While consumption habits have been utilised as a means of generating a hump shapedoutput response to monetary policy shocks in sticky-price New Keynesian economies,there is relatively little analysis of the impact of habits (particularly, external habits) onoptimal policy. In this paper we...