We study how monetary policy and risk shocks affect asset prices in the US, the euro area, and Japan, differentiating between "traditional" monetary policy and communication events, each decomposed into "pure" and information shocks. Communication shocks from the US spill over to risk in the...

We explore the macroeconomic impact of a compression in the long-term bond yield spread within the context of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 via a Bayesian time-varying parameter structural VAR. We identify a ‘pure' spread shock which, leaving the short-term rate unchanged by construction,...

We study the incidence and severity of lower-bound episodes and the efficacy of three types of state-dependent policies—forward guidance about the future path of interest rates, large-scale asset purchases and spending-based fiscal stimulus—in ameliorating the adverse consequences stemming...

We estimate the natural rate of interest for the US and the euro area in a semi-structural model comprising a Taylor rule. Our estimates feature key elements of Laubach and Williams (2003), but are more consistent with using conventional policy rules: we model inflation to be stationary, with...

This paper examines monetary transmission and macroeconomic shocks in a medium scale macroeconomic model with costly banking estimated for euro area data. In addition to data on measures of real activity and prices, we include data on bank loans, loan rates, and reserves for the estimation of...

Even when the policy rate is not at the effective lower bound (ELB), the possibility that the policy rate will become constrained by the ELB in the future lowers today's inflation by creating tail risk in future inflation and thus reducing expected inflation. In an empirically rich model...

In the New-Keynesian model, optimal interest rate policy under uncertainty is formulated without reference to monetary aggregates as long as certain standard assumptions on the distributions of unobservables are satisfied. The model has been criticized for failing to explain common trends in...

I study macro-prudential policy intervention in economies with secularly low interest rates. Intervention boosts risk-free real interest rates unintentionally, simply as a by-product of containing systemic risk in financial markets. Thus, intervention also boosts the natural rate of return in...

Could a monetary policy loosening entail the opposite effect than the intended expansionary impact in a low interest rate environment? We demonstrate that the risk of hitting the rate at which the effect reverses depends on the capitalization of the banking sector by using a non-linear...

We provide evidence that liquidity premia on assets that are more relevant for private agents' intertemporal choices than near-money assets increase in response to expansionary forward guidance announcements. We introduce a structural specifi cation of liquidity premia based on assets'...