In a monetary union, the interaction between several governments and a single central bank is plagued by several sources of deficit bias, including common pool problems. Each government has strong preferences over local spending and taxation but suffers only part of the costs of union-wide...

The effect of changes in demographic structure on medium-run trends of key macroeconomic variables is estimated using a Panel VAR of 21 OECD economies. The panel data variability assists the identification of direct effects of demographics, while the dynamic structure uncovers long-term effects....

We propose a model that delivers endogenous variations in term spreads driven primarily by banks' portfolio decision and their appetite to bear the risk of maturity transformation. We first show that fluctuations of the future profitability of banks' portfolios affect their ability to cover for...

During the 15 years prior to the global financial crisis the volume of securitized assets transacted in the US grew substantially, reflecting a change in the nature of the financial intermediation process. Together with increased securitization of assets, financial entities, who participate more...

We document systematic and significant time variation in US lifecycle non-durable consumption profiles. Consumption profiles have consistently become flatter: differences in consumption across generations have decreased. Pooling data across different periods to identify lifecycle profiles masks...

We document systematic and significant time variation in US lifecycle non-durable consumption profiles. Consumption profiles have consistently become flatter: differences in consumption across generations have decreased. Pooling data across different periods to identify lifecycle profiles masks...