The aim of this paper is to assess whether explicitly modeling structural change increases the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts. We produce real time out-of-sample forecasts for inflation, the unemployment rate and the interest rate using a Time-Varying Coefficients VAR with Stochastic...

This paper describes how we constructed a real-time database for the euro area covering more than 200 series regularly published in the European Central Bank Monthly Bulletin, as made available ahead of publication to the Governing Council members before their first meeting of the month. We...

We define nowcasting as the prediction of the present, the very near future and the very recent past. Crucial in this process is to use timely monthly information in order to nowcast key economic variables, such as e.g. GDP, that are typically collected at low frequency and published with long...

Standard accounts of the Great Depression attribute an important causal role to monetary policy errors in accounting for the catastrophic collapse in economic activity observed in the early 1930s. While views vary on the relative importance of money versus credit contraction in the propagation...

We study optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model where occasional declines in agents' confidence can give rise to persistent liquidity trap episodes. Unlike in the case of fundamental-driven liquidity traps, there is no straightforward recipe for mitigating the welfare costs...

What are the macroeconomic consequences of a government that is limited in its willingness or ability to raise primary surpluses, and a central bank that accommodates its interest-rate policy to the fiscal conditions? I address this question in a dynamic stochastic sticky-price model with...

The secular decline in the equilibrium real interest rate observed over the past decades has materially limited the room for policy-rate reductions in recessions, and has led to a marked increase in the incidence of episodes where policy rates are likely to be at, or near, the effective lower...

This paper studies the relationship between the business cycle and financial intermediation in the euro area. We establish stylized facts and study their stability during the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Long-term interest rates have been exceptionally high and...