Countries around the world differ substantially in the relative importance of their banks and capital markets in providing investment financing. This paper examines one potential explanation for the cross-country differences in the importance of banks and capital market financing of investment....

We study twenty years of monthly production data for 11 manufacturing industries in 19 countries. Using the fact that in some countries production virtually shuts down for one summer month, together with the differences in the timing of aggregate cyclical fluctuations, we are able to learn about...

This paper discusses how optimal monetary policy is affected by differences in the combination of shocks an economy experiences and the rigidities it exhibits. Without both nominal rigidities and economic shocks, monetary policy would be irrelevant. Recognizing this, policymakers increasingly...

This paper investigates the effects of wage indexation on the time-consistent level of inflation. Departing from previous work on time-consistent policy, we study a structural model of the economy. Indexation reduces the cost of inflation, which is inflationary, and steepens the Phillips curve,...

The dramatic improvement in macroeconomic outcomes during the 1990s - stable, low inflation and high, stable growth - can be at least partly ascribed to improved monetary policy. Central banks became more independent and many of them adopted inflation targeting. This paper examines the potential...