Macroeconomic models that omit the shadow economy systematically mis-forecast and mis-measure the effect of fiscal –in particular tax– policy on economic activity and tax revenue. We add an informal sector to the Bank of Greece DSGE model and use the actual package of fiscal consolidation...

Owing to dissatisfaction with the IMF’s de jure classification of exchange-rate regimes, a substantial literature has emerged presenting de facto classifications of exchange-rate systems and using the latter classifications to compare performances of alternative regimes in terms of key...

We compare monetary union to flexible exchange rates in an asymmetric, three country model with active monetary policy. Unlike the traditional OCA literature, we find that countries with a high degree of nominal wage rigidity benefit from monetary union, specially when they join other, similarly...

Fiscal fragility can undermine a government’s ability to honor its bank deposit insurance pledge and induces a positive correlation between sovereign default risk and financial (bank) default risk. We show that this positive relation is reversed if bank capital requirements in fiscally weak...

We study the role of the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio instrument in a DSGE model with a rich set of financial frictions (Clerc et al., 2015). We find that a binding LTV ratio limit in the mortgage market leads to lower credit and default rates in that market as well as lower levels of investment...

We examine the implications of a regional, fixed exchange rate regime for global exchange rate volatility. The concept of the optimum currency area turns out to play an important role. The formation of a regional regime tends to decrease global volatility when countries are symmetric. The...

Lloyd Mints has long been considered a peripheral figure in the development of monetary economics at the University of Chicago. We provide evidence showing that the standard assessment of Mints’s standing in Chicago monetary economics -- and in American monetary economics more broadly -- is...

Milton Friedman was a strong proponent of flexible exchange rates accompanied by a domestic monetary rule. He believed that such a combination would deliver superior economic performance and would also be more consistent with democratic principles than a regime based on fixed exchange rates and...

The origins of the Greek-sovereign debt crisis were the country’s large fiscal and external imbalances. The key factor that abetted those imbalances was the absence of a short-tomedium term adjustment mechanism -- due to perceptions of sovereign bailouts -- in the euro-area that would have...

Dooley, Folkerts-Landau and Garber (DFG) argue that the present constellation of global exchange-rate arrangements constitutes a revived Bretton-Woods system. DFG ALSO argue that the revived system will be sustainable, despite its large global imbalances. We argue that, to the extent that the...