The literature argues that the benefits of an independent Central Bank accrue at no cost to the real side. In this paper, we argue that the lack of correlation between monetary autonomy and output variability, is due to the proactive role of fiscal policy when faced with rigid monetary...

This paper studies the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy within an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Results suggest that, in a model in which bonds and money are counted as net wealth, the primary source of cross-country heterogeneity in response to a common monetary shock is the...

Inequality has been largely ignored in the literature and practice of monetary policy, but is gaining more attention recently. We look at how a decade of unconventional monetary policy (UMP) in Japan affected inequality among households using survey data. Our vector auto regression (VAR) results...

This paper evaluates the Stability and Growth Pact. After examining the rules in place and the experience so far, the Pact is analysed from a political economy perspective, focusing on the choice for so-called soft law and drawing inferences from characteristics of successful fiscal rules at the...

Using an event study approach, we examine the impact of news about Greece and news about a Greek bailout on bank stock prices in 2010 using data for 48 banks included in the European stress tests. We identify the twenty days with extreme returns on Greek sovereign bonds and categorize the news...

An increasing body of evidence suggests that the behavior of the economy has changed in many fundamental ways over the last decades. In particular, greater financial deregulation, larger wealth accumulation, and better policies might have helped lower uncertainty about future income and lengthen...

Following the Maastricht criteria, a country seeking to join the European Monetary Union cannot have an inflation rate in excess of 1.5 percent plus the average inflation rates in the three 'best performing' EU countries. This inflation reference value is a non-increasing function of the number...

I build a small open economy version of the Calvo-type staggered price-setting model with limited asset market participation, and I show that the inverted aggregate demand logic is less likely to apply to small open economies. The equilibrium dynamics of the model are reduced to a representation...

We empirically test whether there is a causal link between the real interest rate and the natural rate of interest, which could be a harbinger of secular stagnation if the real rate declines. Outcomes of VAR models for Japan, Germany and the US show that a fall in the real rate indeed affects...

We study whether clarity of central bank inflation reports affects return volatility in financial markets. We measure clarity of reports by the Czech National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and Sveriges Riksbank using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a standard readability...