This paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on workers with differing levels of labor force attachment. Exploiting variation in labor market tightness across metropolitan areas, we show that the employment of populations with lower labor force attachment—Blacks, high...

This paper empirically studies the impact of the quality of political institutions on the link between central bank independence and inflation. Making use of data on the evolution of central bank independence over time and controlling for possible nonlinearities, we employ interaction models to...

We assess the effects of financial shocks on inflation, and to what extent financial shocks can account for the "missing disinflation" during the Great Recession. We apply a vector autoregressive model to US data and identify financial shocks through sign restrictions. Our main finding is that...

I propose a new term structure model for euro area real and nominal interest rates which explicitly incorporates a time-varying lower bound for nominal interest rates. Results suggest that the lower bound is of importance in structural analyses implying time-varying impulse responses of yield...

We show that exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices varies not only across countries, but also over time. Previous literature has highlighted the role of an economy's "structure" - such as its inflation volatility, inflation rate, use of foreign currency invoicing, and openness - in...

Heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian models with sticky nominal wages usually assume that wage-setting unions demand the same amount of hours from all households. As a result, unions do not take account of the fact that (i) households are heterogeneous in their willingness to work, and that (ii)...

This brief exposition suggests that the Federal Reserve System temporarily guarantee a lower bound on stock prices in order to escape the current combination of liquidity trap and credit crunch. It shortly discusses reasons for this measure, consequences, and some alternatives. It is meant as a...

We consider optimal monetary policy in a model that integrates credit frictions in the standard New Keynesian model with sticky prices and wages as well as adjustment costs of capital. Different from traditional models with credit frictions such as Carlstrom and Fuerst (1998), the model is able...

In this paper we compare the Keynesian, neoclassical and Austrian explanations for low interest rates and sluggish growth. From a Keynesian and neoclassical perspective low interest rates are attributed to ageing societies, which save more for the future (global savings glut). Low growth is...

We analyze monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous firms and financial frictions. Firms differ in their productivity and net worth and face collateral constraints that cause capital misallocation. TFP endogenously depends on the time-varying distribution of firms. Although a...