With the Federal Funds rate approaching the zero lower bound, the U.S. Federal Reserve adopted a range of unconventional monetary policy measures known as Quantitative Easing (QE). Quantifying the impact QE has on the real economy, however, is not straightforward as standard tools such as VAR...

This paper investigates the risk-taking channel of monetary policy on the asset side of banks' balance sheets. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model to show that aggregate lending standards of U.S. banks, e.g. their collateral requirements for firms, are significantly...

We examine how borrowing constraints affect monetary transmission and the trade-off of a welfare maximizing central bank. We develop a sticky price model where money serves as the means of payment and ex-ante identical agents borrow/lend among each other. The credit market is distorted as...

This paper investigates optimal policy in the presence of anticipated (or news) shocks. We determine the optimal unrestricted and restricted policy response in a general rational expectations model and show that, if shocks are news shocks, the optimal unrestricted control rule under commitment...

Shocks in the financial sector caused the great recession of 2008 and pulled down the real economy. To implement financial dynamics in a stylized DSGE-framework we use behavioral elements in expectations to produce waves of bull and bear cycles in the financial intermediation process, that have...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real exchange rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange rate...

This paper estimates the effects of monetary policy on the UK economy based on a new, extensive real-time forecast data set. Employing the Romer Romer identification approach we first construct a new measure of monetary policy innovations for the UK economy. We find that a one percentage point...

Between 1979 and 2009, the German labour market moved along a Beveridge curve with changing slope that used to shift outwards but shifted inwards after severe labour market reforms had come into force. We analyse these dynamics and focus on the macroeconomic outcome of the reforms. For that...

The dynamic comovement between time series is a key concept in macroeconomic analysis. The extent to which series are cyclically synchronized is particularly important for evaluating the feasibility of common policy measures for groups of countries. This paper investigates concepts in the time...

This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the transmission of international business cycles. I document for the G7 countries between 1991 and 2006 that increases in bilateral FDI linkages are associated with more synchronized investment cycles. I also find that the...