This paper shows that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy. When the central bank enjoys only limited credibility a pegged exchange rate regime yields a...

A growing number of papers have studied positive and normative implications of financial frictions in DSGE models. We contribute to this literature by studying the welfare-based monetary policy in a two-country model characterized by financial frictions, alongside a number of key features, like...

We identify the spill-over of demand shocks between the world's two largest advanced economies; the US and the euro area. We estimate a Bayesian VAR with sign restrictions, using standard restrictions for the domestic impact of the shock but a novel approach to identify the geographic location...

A key insight from the open economy literature is that domestic price stability is in general not optimal for countries that exert some market power over their terms of trade. Under commitment, a national benevolent monetary policymaker improves upon the allocation associated with stable...

Inflation volatility is clearly important for structural analysis, forecasting and policy purposes, yet it is often overlooked in the literature. This paper compares inflation volatility among advanced open economies with inflation targeting monetary policy frameworks. The results of the...

A growing number of papers have studied positive and normative implications of financial frictions in DSGE models. We contribute to this literature by studying the welfare-based monetary policy in a two-country model characterized by financial frictions, alongside a number of key features, like...

Building on Beaudry, Nam and Wang (2011) - hereafter BNW -, we use survey data on consumer sentiment in order to identify the causal effects of confidence shocks on real economic activity in a selection of advanced economies. Starting from a set of closed-economy VAR models, we show that these...

We show that the composition of imports has important implications for the optimal volatility of the exchange rate. Using input-output data for 25 countries we document substantial differences in the import and non-tradable content of final demand components, and in the role played by imported...

In a panel covering a large number of countries from 1970 to 2003, we show that net portfolio flows play an important role in correcting external imbalances, since they are driven by common determinants represented by countries’ demographic profiles, the quality of institutions, monetary...

This paper shows that, controlling for standard determinants of net external positions, financially-remote countries exhibit more positive net external positions. This finding is found to be stronger for less advanced countries, hinting at external funding problems for more remote countries....