Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System diverging current account positions in Europe have prevailed. While the Southern and Western European countries have tended to run current account deficits, the current accounts of the Central and Northern European countries, in particular Germany,...

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has had disruptive effects on international trade. As part of its ‘Global Britain’ strategy, in the wake of Brexit, the UK is pursuing a series of Free Trade Agreements with countries around the world, including Canada, Japan,...

For reasons of analytical tractability, new economic geography (NEG) models treat geography in a very simple way: attention is either confined to a simple 2-region or to an equidistant multi-region world. As a result, the main predictions regarding the impact of e.g. diminishing trade costs are...

In the post-war period, the goods composition of trade in OECD countries has changed considerably. We analyze the evolution of comparative advantage using a detailed trade data set and a new analytical tool: the harmonic (weighted) mass index, which enables us to identify periods of structural...

This paper explores whether the cost channel solves the price puzzle. We set-up a New Keynesian DSGE model and estimate it for the euro area by adopting a minimum distance approach. Our findings suggest that - under certain parameter restrictions which are not rejected by the data - the cost...

This paper estimates forward-looking Taylor rules for the euro area. Using the asymmetries in inflation and cyclical output developments across countries, we investigate the adequacy of the single monetary policy for each of the European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries. Notable differences...

This paper proposes a new method of forecasting euro area quarterly real GDP that uses area-wide indicators, which are derived by optimally pooling the information contained in national indicator series. Following the ideas of predictive modeling, we construct the area-wide indicators by...

For reasons of analytical tractability, new economic geography (NEG) models treat geography in a very simple way: attention is either confined to a simple 2-region or to an equidistant multi-region world. As a result, the main predictions regarding the impact of e.g. diminishing trade costs are...

This paper studies the causes of price dispersion in the euro area emerging in response to a shock that hits all member countries symmetrically. We use a panel VAR model which is estimated over the period 1996 - 2007 to generate impulse responses of a range of price and wage variables to an oil...

This paper explores the importance of housing and mortgage market heterogeneity in 12 European countries for the transmission of monetary policy. We use a panel VAR model which is estimated over the period 1995-2006 to generate impulse responses of key macroeconomic variables to a monetary...