Over the last decades, hours worked per capita have declined substantially in many OECD economies. Using a neoclassical growth model with endogenous work-leisure choice, we assess the role of trend growth slowdown in accounting for the decline in hours worked. In the model, a permanent reduction...

We study how determinacy and learnability of global rational expectations equilibrium may be affected by monetary policy in a simple, two country, New Keynesian framework. The two blocks may be viewed as the U.S. and Europe, or as regions within the euro zone. We seek to understand how monetary...

Both in theory and practice, capital controls and dual exchange rate systems can be part of a country's optimal tax policy. We first show how a dual exchange rate system can be interpreted as a tax (or subsidy) on international capital income. We show that a dual exchange rate system, with...

We study how determinacy and learnability of global rational expectations equilibrium may be affected by monetary policy in a simple, two country, new Keynesian framework. The two blocks may be viewed as the U.S. and Europe, or as regions within the euro zone. We seek to understand how monetary...

The paper builds a simplified model describing the economy of a currency union with decentralised national fiscal policy, where the main features characterising the policy-making are similar to those in EMU. National governments choose the size of deficit taking into account the two main rules...

This paper reviews recent research on the political economy of monetary policy-making, both by economists and political scientists. The traditional argument for central bank independence (CBI) is based on the desire to counter inflationary biases. However, studies in political science on the...

This paper analyzes the impact of US central bank communication on individual stock returns. We find a strong conditional effect of communication on stocks. The response of equities to central bank talk depends critically on the business cycle. In bad times, monetary policy communication...

This paper constructs a macro-finance model with two types of borrowers: entrepreneurs who engage in productive activities and gamblers who play in lotteries. It links a central bank's interest rate policy to expected cash flows of both types of borrowers. Via this link we study how the...

Recent cross-country studies on the globalization and output-inflation tradeoff correlation find openness has no significant effect on OECD countries. Those studies assume parameter constancy across countries. In this paper, we argue that this assumption does not hold for major industrialized...

Banking regulation has proven to be inadequate to guard systemic stability in the recent financial crisis. Central banks have provided liquidity and ministries of finance have set up rescue programmes to restore confidence and stability. Using a model of a systemic bank suffering from liquidity...