In the data, a sizable fraction of price changes are temporary price reductions referred to as sales. Existing models include no role for sales. Hence, when confronted with data in which a large fraction of price changes are sales related, the models must either exclude sales from the data or...

Closely following the seminal contribution of Jappelli and Pistaferri (2014) - based on Italian household survey data - we employ data of 22 European countries to assess the role of heterogeneity of the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) for fiscal policy in the Euro area. We document an...

We scrutinize the monetary transmission mechanism in New-Keynesian models, focusing on the role of capital, the key ingredient in the transition from the basic framework to DSGE models. The widely held view that monetary policy affects output and inflation in these models through a real interest...

In this paper we estimate inflation expectations for several Latin American countries using an affine model that takes as factors the observed inflation and the parameters generated from zero-coupon yield curves of nominal bonds. By implementing this approach, we avoid the use of...

In the U.S, after age 65, households face income and health risks and a large fraction of these risks are transitory. While consumption significantly responds to transitory income shocks, out-of-pocket medical expenses do not. In contrast, both consumption and out-of-pocket medical expenses...