We test whether the realationship between the normal exchange rate and the news in its underlying fundamentals has non-linear features. In order to do so, we develop a Markov switching model and apply it to a sample of low and high inflation countries. The empirical analysis shows that for the...

We provide evidence indicating that countries with well-developed social security systems do not necessarily face a trade-off between social spending and competitiveness. On average, countries that spend a lot on social needs score well in the competitiveness league. We investigate the...

We develop a simple model of the foreign exchange market in which agents optimize their portfolio and use different forecasting rules. They check the profitability of these rules ex post and select the more profitable one. This model produces two kinds of equilibria, a fundamental and a bubble...

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...

We analyse a card payment system to assess the economic impact of the interchange fee. This fee is paid by the bank of the merchant, the acquirer, to the bank of the consumer, the issuer. We build up a mode in order to explore whether the interchange fee can enhance the participation to the...

We analyse the workings of a simple non-lnear exchange rate model in which agents hold different beliefs about the underlying model. We destinguish between "chartists" and fundamentalists". The non-linearities in the model originate from transactions costs and from the existence of non-linear...

In this paper we develop a model of the exchange rate. The existence of transactions costs introduces an important non-linearity. Agents have different beliefs about the future exchange rate. We show that this simple model creates great complexity in the market which is characterised by the fact...

In this paper we investigate the effects of central bank interventions (CBI) in a noise trading model with chartists and fundamentalists. We first estimate a model in which chartists extrapolate past returns and fundamentalists forecast a mean reverting dynamics of the exchange rate towards a...

We develop a simple model of the exchange rate in which agents optimize their portfolio and use different forecasting rules. They check the profitability of these rules ex post and select the more profitable one. This model produces two kinds of equilibria, a fundamental and a bubble one. In a...