This paper studies the determinants of the euro exchange rate during the European sovereign debt crisis, allowing a role for macroeconomic fundamentals, policy actions and the public debate by policy makers. It finds that the euro exchange rate mainly danced to its own tune, with a particularly...

In this paper, we outline a version of the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) of the euro area designed for use in the (Broad) Macroeconomic Projection Exercises regularly undertaken by ECB/Eurosystem staff. We present estimation results for the NAWM that are obtained by employing Bayesian inference...

This paper studies to what extent the experiences of households shape their willingness to take financial risks. It follows the methodology of Malmendier and Nagel (2011) and applies it to a novel data set on household finances covering euro area households. We show that experienced stock market...

We compare real-time density forecasts for the euro area using three DSGE models. The benchmark is the Smets-Wouters model and its forecasts of real GDP growth and inflation are compared with those from two extensions. The first adds financial frictions and expands the observables to include a...

In this paper we review the methodology of forecasting with log-linearised DSGE models using Bayesian methods. We focus on the estimation of their predictive distributions, with special attention being paid to the mean and the covariance matrix of h-step ahead forecasts. In the empirical...

This paper employs stochastic simulations of the New Area-Wide Model -- a micro-founded open-economy model developed at the ECB -- to investigate the consequences of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates for the evolution of risks to price stability in the Euro area during the recent...

This paper analyses the real-time forecasting performance of the New Keynesian DSGE model of Galí, Smets, and Wouters (2012) estimated on euro area data. It investigates to what extent forecasts of inflation, GDP growth and unemployment by professional forecasters improve the forecasting...

Mortgages constitute the largest part of household debt. An essential choice when taking out a mortgage is between fixed-interest-rate mortgages (FRMs) and adjustable-interest-rate mortgages (ARMs). However, so far, no comprehensive cross-country study has analyzed what determines household...

This paper provides a detailed description of an extended version of the ECB’s New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) of the euro area (cf. Christoffel, Coenen, and Warne 2008). The extended model—called NAWM II—incorporates a rich financial sector with the threefold aim of (i) accounting for a...

The paper considers a Bayesian approach to the cointegrated VAR model with a uniform prior on the cointegration space. Building on earlier work by Villani (2005b), where the posterior probability of the cointegration rank can be calculated conditional on the lag order, the current paper also...