Why do some states default on their debt more often than others? We argue that sovereign default is the outcome of a political struggle among different groups of citizens. It is more likely to happen if: (i) domestic debt-holders are relatively weak; (ii) the political costs of the financial...

While many analyses of monetary policy consider only a target for a short-term nominal interest rate, other dimensions of policy have recently been of greater importance: changes in the supply of bank reserves, changes in the assets acquired by central banks, and changes in the interest rate...

Based on a structural VAR and a dynamic general equilibrium model, we provide evidence of the changes in the monetary transmission mechanism (MTM) in the European Monetary Union after the adoption of the common currency in 1999. The estimation of a Bayesian VAR over the periods before and after...

An important concern for the European Central Bank (ECB), and all central banks alike, is the necessity of making decisions in real time under conditions of great uncertainty about the underlying state of the economy. We address this concern by estimating on real-time data a New Keynesian model...

This paper examines the impact of large-scale asset purchases (LSAP) on U.S. asset prices (nominal and inflation-indexed bonds, stocks, and U.S. dollar spot exchange rates) using an event study with intraday data. The surprise component of LSAP announcements is identified from Financial Times...

In the past few years, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been using forward guidance about the federal funds rate in a more explicit way than ever before. This paper explores the market reaction to the forward guidance, with particular focus on the use of calendar dates and economic...

This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and financial effects of the Eurosystem's Asset Purchase Programme (APP) and its interaction with a member country's macroprudential policy. We assume that some households in a euro-area (EA) country are subject to a borrowing constraint, and that their...

A major lesson of the recent financial crisis is that the ability of banks to withstand liquidity shocks and to provide lending to one another is crucial for financial stability. This paper studies the functioning of the interbank lending market and the optimal policy of a central bank in...

We evaluate the global macroeconomic effects of fiscal and monetary policy measures to counterbalance secular stagnation by simulating a five-region New Keynesian model of the world economy, calibrated to the United States (US), the euro area (EA), Japan (JP), China (CH), and the rest of the...

We model an economy with long-term mortgages and show that some characteristics of mortgage contracts – such as the type of interest rate (adjustable versus fixed) and the loan-to-value ratio – matter for the transmission of monetary policy impulses, both conventional and unconventional. A...