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...

This paper tests the ability of popular New Keynesian models, which are traditionally used to study monetary policy and business cycles, to match the data regarding a key channel for monetary transmission: the dynamic interactions between macroeconomic variables and their corresponding...

An economy exhibits structural heterogeneity when the forecasts of different agents have different effects on the determination of aggregate variables. Various forms of structural heterogeneity can arise and we study the important case of economies in which agents' behavior depends on forecasts...

This paper shows that price rigidity evolves in an economy populated by imperfectly rational agents who experiment with alternative rules of thumb. In the model, firms must set their prices in face of aggregate demand shocks. Their payoff depends on the level of aggregate demand, as well as on...

In this paper, we analyze coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within the EMU by focusing, in a dynamic set-up, on asymmetries, externalities, and the existence of a multi-country context. We study how coalitions among fiscal and monetary authorities are formed and what are their...

It is an open question whether and how indexed wage contracts reduce welfare or raise average inflation. This paper analyzes the impact of indexed wage contracts on inflation and social welfare in a Barro Gordon model with discretionary monetary policy by endogenizing social costs of indexation....

In this paper we address the issue of how transmission uncertainty could affect the choice between a federal monetary policy based on national data and one on aggregated data.We find that the uncertainty about the transmission process increases the need to take into account information about...

This paper studies the design, effects and interactions of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro-area and between the euro-area and the non euro-area. To do so, a stylized three-country model of monetary and fiscal policy rules is constructed. It is analyzed how monetary and fiscal rules...

The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural reforms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate countries. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate countries, members of the...

It is widely debated whether a monetary union has to be accompanied by a fiscal transfer scheme to accommodate asymmetric shocks. We build a model of a monetary union with a central bank and two heterogeneous countries that are linked by a fiscal transfer scheme with repercussions on monetary...