We use a panel of 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009 to investigate the effects of different fiscal adjustment strategies on long-term interest rates - a key fiscal indicator reflecting the costs of government debt service. A government confronted with high deficits and rising debt will sooner...

Bank distress can have severe negative consequences for the stability of the financial system, the real economy, and public finances. Regimes for restructuring and restoring banks financed by bank levies and fiscal backstops seek to reduce these costs. Bank levies attempt to internalize systemic...

This paper aims to show why Irving Fisher's own data on interest rates and inflation in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Calcutta, and Tokyo from 1825 to 1927 suggested to him that nominal interest rates adjusted neither quickly nor fully to changes in inflation, not even in the long run. In...

An entrepreneur chooses a relationship bank or market finance. The advantage of bank finance is that the quality of the entrepreneur’s project is identified early, allowing to liquidate low-quality projects. The loan contract induces an efficient continuation decision if the entrepreneur has...

This paper argues that probability forecasts convey information on the uncertainties that surround macroeconomic forecasts in a manner which is straightforward and which is preferable to other alternatives, including the use of confidence intervals. Probability forecasts relating to UK output...

In this paper, I demonstrate that an indicator which is commonly used to assess the long-term fiscal sustainability of public finances in EU member states (“S2”) is also defined if government borrowing rates are assumed to be permanently lower than the growth rate of GDP. I illustrate this...

The overnight money market rate is a key monetary policy tool. In recent years, central banks worldwide have developed new monetary policy strategies aimed at keeping its deviations from the policy rate small and short-lived. This paper describes the main instruments used for this purpose by the...

This paper introduces a framework to study the links between the supply of liquid assets for the financial market and the international allocation of economic activity. Private assets’ liquidity properties - their usefulness as collateral or media of exchange in financial transactions - affect...

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens by households and governments lower aggregate demand, and thus natural interest rates. At the core of the theory is the simple yet under-appreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal...