Gesell taxes on money holdings have received attention in recent decades as a way of alleviating the zero lower bound on interest rates. Less known is that such a tax was the predominant method used to generate seigniorage in large parts of medieval Europe for around two centuries. When the...

How do aggregate quantities at the business cycle frequency respond to shocks to the spread between residential mortgage rates and government bonds? Using a structural VAR approach, we .nd that mortgage spread shocks impact the real economy by both economically and statistically signi.cant...

In this paper our main aim is to quantify the role that housing collateral plays for the monetary transmission mechanism. Furthermore, we want to explore the implications of the increase in household indebtedness, and specifically the loan-to-value ratio, in the last two decades. We set up a two...

We develop a New Keynesian model with staggered price and wage setting where downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) arises endogenously through the wage bargaining institutions. It is shown that the optimal (discretionary) monetary policy response to changing economic conditions then becomes...

In this paper, we outline a baseline DSGE model which enables a straightforward analysis of wage bargaining between firms and households/unions in a model with both staggered prices and wages. Relying on empirical evidence, we assume that prices can be changed whenever wages are changed. This...

In central theories of monetary non-neutrality the Ramsey optimal inflation rate varies between the negative of the real interest rate and zero. This paper explores how the interaction of nominal wage and search and matching frictions affect the policy prescription. We show that adding the...

What are the effects of different borrower-based macroprudential tools when both real and nominal interest rates are low? We study this question in a New Keynesian model featuring long-term debt, housing transaction costs and a zero lower bound constraint on policy rates. We find that the...

How do aggregate quantities at the business cycle frequency respond to shocks to the spread between residential mortgage rates and government bonds? Using a structural VAR approach, we find that mortgage spread shocks impact the real economy by both economically and statistically significant...

We explore the implications of shocks to expected future productivity. In a setting with limited enforcement of financial contracts, firms have to post collateral to obtain external finance. In a real one-sector model with this type of "collateral constraint", positive news about future...