This paper assesses the contribution of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Germany's ongoing economic crisis, a vicious circle of decline in which the country has become stuck since the early 1990s. It is argued that the ECB continues the Bundesbank tradition of asymmetric policymaking: the bank...

The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscal sustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the increase in stock of public debt/GDP induced by the global recession, to include the perspective that the sustainability of a given public debt/GDP depends on...

The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscal sustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the obvious increase in the stock of public debt/GDP induced by the global recession, to include the neglected perspective that the vulnerabilities associated...

What are the macroeconomic effects of tax adjustments in response to large public debt shocks in highly integrated economies? The answer from standard closed-economy models is deceptive, because they underestimate the elasticity of capital tax revenues and ignore crosscountry spillovers of tax...

Following Giraitis, Kapetanios, and Yates (2014b), this paper uses kernel methods to estimate a seven variable time-varying (TV) vector autoregressive (VAR) model on the data set constructed by Smets and Wouters (2007). We apply an indirect inference method to map from this TV VAR to time...

This paper computes welfare-maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules in a real business cycle model augmented with sticky prices, a demand for money, taxation, and stochastic government consumption. We consider simple feedback rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as a function of...

We examine the impact of different degrees of fiscal feedback on debt in an economy with nominal rigidities where monetary policy is optimal. We look at the extent to which different degrees of fiscal feedback enhance or detract from the ability of the monetary authorities to stabilize output...

A standard model of activist macroeconomic policy derives a monetary reaction rule by assuming that governments have performance objectives, but are constrained by an augmented Phillips curve. In addition to monetary policy, governments apply a variety of instruments to influence inflation and...

I offer a macroeconomic perspective on the "Reserves for All" (RFA) proposal to let the general public use electronic central bank money. After distinguishing RFA from cryptocurrencies and relating the proposal to discussions about narrow banking and the abolition of cash I propose an...

This paper investigates the phenomenon of persistent macroeconomic divergence that has occurred across the eurozone in recent years. Optimal currency area theory would point toward asymmetric shocks and structural factors as the foremost candidate causes. The alternative hypothesis pursued here...