This paper investigates financial frictions in US postwar data to understand the interaction between the real business cycle and the credit market. A Bayesian estimation technique is used to estimate a large Vector Auto regression and New Keynesian models demonstrating how financial shocks can...

The perception that inflation dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are driven by supply shocks implies a limited role for monetary policy in influencing inflation in the short run. SSA's rapid growth, its integration with the global economy, changes in the policy frameworks, among others, in the...

This paper provides new evidence of the effect of monetary policy shocks on income inequality. Using a measure of unanticipated changes in policy rates for a panel of 32 advanced and emerging market countries over the period 1990-2013, the paper finds that contractionary (expansionary) monetary...

We investigate the drivers of dynamics of major U.S. FX bilaterals. We first construct a novel measure of FX risk premiums using Consensus exchange rate forecasts. We then use VAR analysis to show that (i) risk premium shocks play a key role in driving dynamics of the major U.S. FX bilaterals;...

This paper analyzes the nonlinear relationship between monetary policy and financial stress and its effects on the transmission of shocks to output. Results from a Bayesian Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) model show that the effects of monetary policy shocks on output growth are stronger...

Fiscal stimulus was widely advocated during the global crisis, a period characterized by monetary policy constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB) in many countries, in part because of expected positive spillovers. Standard New Keynesian models predict the cross-border transmission of...

We examine three main channels through which U.S. monetary policy shocks affect firm investment in foreign countries: (1) the balance sheet channel; (2) the financial channel of the exchange rate; and (3) the trade channel. For this purpose, we use quarterly firm-level data for 63 advanced...

We study the impact of the US quantitative easing (QE) on both the emerging and advanced economies, estimating a global vector error-correction model (GVECM) and conducting counterfactual analyses. We focus on the effects of reductions in the US term and corporate spreads. First, US QE measures...

We study whether clarity of central bank inflation reports affects return volatility in financial markets. We measure clarity of reports by the Czech National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and Sveriges Riksbank using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a standard readability...

This paper investigates the asymmetries in trade spillovers from sector-specific technology shocks in China to selected euro area countries. We use a Ricardian-gravity trade model to estimate sectoral competitiveness in individual euro area countries. Simulations on the impact of productivity...