Low international competitiveness of a set of euro area countries, which have become evident by large current account deficits and rising risk premiums on government bonds, is one of the most challenging economic policy issues for Europe. We analyse the role of private restructuring and public...

This paper analyzes the interest rate pass-through for Germany and the euro area using for the first time a fully harmonized data set on bank retail rates. In a vector error correction model, the speed and completeness of the pass-through from market rates to bank interest rates are estimated...

This paper shows that remunerating required reserves can increase the flexibility of monetary policy. The remuneration at the current repo rate implies constant net marginal interest costs of holding required reserves. This allows the central bank also to change the rate also within a reserve...

This paper examines the relation between money and housing variables in the euro area and in the US. Our empirical model is based on a standard money demand relation which is augmented by housing market variables. In doing so, co-integrated money demand relationships can be established for both...

We turn our attention to the role of money for determining nominal magnitudes. Using US data, we find that the aggregate “nominal output plus and stock market capitalisation” is closely related to the money stock, lending support to one of Milton Friedman’s key monetarist propositions....

We analyze the importance of global shocks for the global economy and national policy makers. More specifically, we investigate whether monetary policy has become less effective in the wake of financial globalization. We also examine whether there is increasing uncertainty for central banks due...