In many applications common in testing for convergence the number of cross-sectional units is large and the number of time periods are few. In these situations asymptotic tests based on an omnibus null hypothesis are characterised by a number of problems. In this paper we propose a multiple...

The financial crisis has led to the development of an active debate on the use of macro-prudential instruments for regulating the banking system, in particular for liquidity and capital holdings. Within the context of a micro-founded macroeconomic model, we allow commercial banks to choose their...

The financial crisis and its aftermath has stimulated a vigorous debate on the use of macro-prudential instruments for both regulating the banking system and for providing additional tools for monetary policy makers. The widespread adoption of non-conventional monetary policies has provided some...

Prior to the fi nancial crisis mainstream monetary policy practice had become disconnected from money. We outline the basic rationale for this development using a simple model of money and credit in which we explore the conditions under which money matters directly for the conduct of policy....

We propose a measure of life satisfaction, alternative to the standard synthetic cognitive wellbeing question, based on the specifi c contribution of eleven life satisfaction sub-components (including satisfaction about the past, life opportunities, hope for the future, vitality, control over...

We study the transmission of fiscal policy under imperfect information where government spending is composed by permanent and transitory components. Agents learn about the previous processes by only observing overall public spending and a noisy signal. Under this setting and employing maximum...

We study information and consumption and whether consumers respond symmetrically to good and bad news. We define a news variable and show that it has explanatory power. We, then, test the hypothesis that consumers react more to bad news than to good news using the PSID to analyze the response of...

Some criticism has been raised on the actual capability of corruption perception-based indices to gauge the essence of concepts they aim to measure. One can argue that perceptions about corruption are not matching reality and could be the reflection of distorted truth. Based on this evidence we...

Within the OECD Better Life Initiative, the Better Life Index (BLI) represents a major attempt to measure well-being and societal progress beyond GDP, following up the recommendations outlined in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission report. Using a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach, we...

We analyse the macroeconomic effects of a debt consolidation policy in the Euro Area mimicking the Fiscal Compact Rule (FCR). The rule requires the signatory states to target a debt-to-GDP ratio below 60%. Within the context of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models (DSGE), we augment a...