In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008 (and the resulting Great Recession) policymakers became concerned about a potential long-term effect of the crisis on the wider economy. For instance, in an ECFIN Economic Brief titled "The financial crisis and potential growth: Policy...

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 argue that since there are several impediments to international risk sharing, the welfare gains from full international risk sharing, which have been the object of analysis in the previous literature, are not suggestive. Instead, we study the gains from feasible risk sharing and find that...

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...

In this paper we estimate ideal points of Bank Presidents and Board Governors at the FOMC. We use stated preferences from FOMC transcripts and estimate a hierarchical spatial voting model. We find a clear difference between the average Board Governor and Bank President. We find little evidence...

This paper starts with a discussion of the various aspects of accountability of central banks. On the basis of this discussion we construct an indicator for accountability for 16 central banks, including the European Central Bank. It is shown that the degree of accountability differs...

Should central banks increase their degree of transparency any further? We show that there is likely to be an optimal intermediate degree of central bank transparency. Up to this optimum more transparency is desirable: it improves the quality of private sector inflation forecasts. But beyond the...