Assessing the impact of the Asset Purchase Programme (APP) by the European Central Bank (ECB) on euro area sovereign yields is challenging, because the monetary policy announcement in January 2015 was already implicitly communicated to the market in the second half of 2014. Therefore, to...

We introduce a non-linear model to study the adjustment of fiscal policy variables in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain over the last 50 years, based on endogenously estimated budget deficit-to-GDP thresholds, which vary with fiscal disequilibria, the economic cycle and financial market...

We examine the degree of market power in the big four countries of the euro area using macro and firm micro data. We focus on three main indicators of market power in and across countries: namely, the concentration ratios, the markup and the degree of economic dynamism. For the macro database we...

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...

We develop a framework for analyzing quot;medium-runquot; departures from balanced growth, and apply it to the economies of continental Europe. A time-varying factor-augmenting production function (mimicking quot;directedquot; technical change) with a below-unitary substitution elasticity...

In this paper, we employ a calibrated two-country version of the New Area-wide Model (NAWM) currently under development at the European Central Bank to examine the potential benefits and spillovers of reducing labour-market distortions caused by euro area tax structures. Our analysis shows that...

We study correlations between the risk-free rate and sovereign yields of ten euro area countries using smooth transition conditional correlation GARCH (STCC-GARCH) specifications, controlling for credit risk in mean and variance equations and conditioning non-linearly to liquidity risk....

The identification of non-standard monetary policy shocks is a key challenge for econometricians, not least as these measures are somewhat unprecedented in modern central banking history and as the instruments vary widely across the various non-standard measures. This paper focuses on the 3-year...

We build a model of the euro area incorporating financial market frictions at the level of firms and households. Entrepreneurs borrow from financial intermediaries in order to purchase business capital, in the spirit of the 'financial accelerator' literature. We also introduce two types of...

Since the intensification of the crisis in September 2008, all euro area long-term government bond yields relative to the German Bund have been characterized by highly persistent processes with upward trends for countries with weaker fiscal fundamentals. Looking at the daily period 1 September...