By combining industry-level data on output and prices with monetary policy rates for a panel of 88 countries, this paper analyzes how the effects of monetary policy vary with certain industry characteristics. Next to being interesting in their own right, our results are informative on the...

The recovery of private investment in Italy has lagged its euro area peers over the past decade. This paper examines the role of elevated labor costs in hindering the recovery. Specifically, labor costs rose faster than labor productivity prior to the global financial crisis and have remained...

The paper investigates how changes in industries'' funding costs affect total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Based on panel regressions using 31 U.S. and Canadian industries between 1991 and 2007, and using industries'' dependence on external funding as an identification mechanism, we show...

In this paper, we argue that inflation targeting could be the future of Tunisia's monetary policy. Monetary targeting has proven to be ineffective due to the composition of reserve money, structural liquidity deficit, and higher instability of the money multiplier after 2010. Exchange rate...

In the last two decades, manufacturing industries in Korea have become more concentrated, and interconnectedness across industries and to foreign countries has risen via vertical relationships and trade linkages. This paper investigates the transmission of economic shocks in such a highly...

Why did the Great Recession lead to such a slow recovery? I build a model where heterogeneous firms invest in physical and intangible capital, and can default on their debt. In case of default, intangible assets are harder to seize by creditors. Hence, intangible capital faces higher financing...

Financial markets are eager for any signal of monetary policy from the People's Bank of China (PBC). The importance of effective monetary policy communication will only increase as China continues to liberalize its financial system and open its economy. This paper discusses the country's unique...

The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available...

Central banks in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) have been modernizing their monetary policy frameworks, often moving toward inflation targeting (IT). However, questions regarding the strength of monetary policy transmission from interest rates to inflation and output have often...