We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly available quarterly dataset of fiscal variables for the period 1981-2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro area countries and the US, we use a standard structural VAR framework, and...

This paper estimates a hybrid New Keynesian model on euro area data and evaluates the performance of different simple policy rules and of the optimal unconstrained rule under commitment. The study reaches two main conclusions. First, inflation is found to be mainly forward-looking in the euro...

This paper assesses the performance of monetary indicators as well as of a large range of economic and financial indicators in predicting euro area HICP inflation out-of-sample over the period first quarter 1999 till third quarter 2006 considering standard bivariate forecasting models, factor...

This paper provides evidence on the reliability of euro area real-time output gap estimates. A genuine real-time data set for the euro area is used, including vintages of several sets of euro area output gap estimates available from 1999 to 2006. It turns out that real-time estimates of the...

The ECB objective is set in terms of year on year growth rate of the Euro area HICP. Nonetheless, a good deal of attention is given to national data by market analysts when they try to anticipate monetary policy moves. In this paper we use the Generalized Dynamic Factor model to develop a set of...

In this paper I estimate a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model for the Euro Area, which closely follows the structure of the model developed by Smets and Wouters (2003, 2005, 2007), with the addition of the so-called financial accelerator mechanism developed in Bernanke,...

An aggregation exercise is proposed that aims at in-vestigating whether the fast average adjustment of the disaggregate inflation series of the euro area CPI translates into the slow adjustment of euro area aggregate inflation. We first estimate a dynamic factor model for 404 inflation...

Surprisingly it did not, or at least not directly. Using micro data on consumer prices and sectoral inflation rates from 6 euro area countries, spanning several years before and after the introduction of the euro, we look at whether EMU has altered the behaviour of retail price setting and/or...

Over the last two centuries, the cross-spectral coherence between either narrow or broad money growth and inflation at the frequency ω=0 has exhibited little variation–being, most of the time, close to one–in the U.S., the U.K., and several other countries, thus implying that the fraction...

Most analyses of the U.S. Great Moderation have been based on structural VAR methods, and have consistently pointed towards good luck as the main explanation for the greater macroeconomic stability of recent years. Based on an estimated New-Keynesian model in which the only source of change is...