We use UK transaction-level data during the Covid-19 pandemic to study whether mortgage payment holidays (PH) can act as a mechanism for smoothing household consumption following negative aggregate shocks. Our results suggest that mortgage PH were accessed by both households with pre-existing...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented shock to economic activity with abrupt and unexpected changes in household consumption behavior. This paper investigates how the spread of the pandemic and government interventions have affected consumer spending using daily card transaction data...

We study the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 epidemic in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium setup with nominal rigidities. We evaluate various containment policies and show that they allow to dramatically reduce the welfare cost of the disease. Then we investigate the role that...

This paper jointly analyzes the optimal conduct of monetary policy, foreign exchange intervention, fiscal policy, macroprudential policy, and capital flow management. This policy analysis is based on an estimated medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the world...

The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment measures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose a...

This paper analyses inflation dynamics in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) using a constructed dataset for country-specific commodity price indices and panel cointegrated vector autoregressive (VAR) models. Imported commodity price shocks are significant in explaining...

We employ a structural panel VAR model with interaction terms to identify determinants of effective transmission from central bank policy rates to retail lending rates in a large country sample. The framework allows deriving country specific pass-through estimates broken down into the...

This paper studies economic and financial spillovers from the euro area to Poland in a two-country semi-structural model. The model incorporates various channels of macrofinancial linkages and cross-border spillovers. We parameterize the model through an extensive calibration process, and...

High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or below market real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for...

This paper presents a fear theory of the economy, based on the interplay between fear of rare disasters and the interest rate on safe assets. To do this, I study the macroeconomic consequences of government-administered interest rates in the neoclassical real business cycle model. When the...