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...

Over time, the banking, insurance and securities sectors have become increasingly interlinked and one way through which this occurs is via financial conglomerates. Such groups, in particular those that combine banking and insurance, have over time become more important in Europe. They require an...

Following the adoption by the Basel Committee of new capital rules for banks, a process is now taking place in the EU to transpose the rules into Community law and, ultimately, into national legislation. This paper gives an overview of the main issues that relate to the EU implementation, mainly...

The ECB Working Paper Series seeks to disseminate economic research on issues that are relevant to the various tasks and functions of the ECB. The Series invites submissions of research work by ECB staff and visitors. Papers by researchers not affiliated with the ECB may also be considered for...

Using the Consensus Economics dataset with individual expertforecasts from G7 countries we investigate determinants of disagreement (crosssectionaldispersion of forecasts) about six key economic indicators. Disagreementabout real variables (GDP, consumption, investment and unemployment)has a...

Monetary Policy Committees differ in the way the interest rate proposal is preparedand presented in the policy meeting. In this paper we show analytically how differentarrangements could affect the voting behaviour of individual MPC members andtherefore policy outcomes. We then apply our results...