To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first systematic study of the predictive power of monetary aggregates for future inflation for the cross section of New EU Member States. This paper provides stylized facts on monetary versus non-monetary (economic and fiscal) determinants of...

During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s the Bundesbank established an outstanding reputation in the world of central banking. Germany achieved a high degree of domestic stability and provided safe haven for investors in times of turmoil in the international financial system. Eventually the...

This paper examines the impact of downward wage rigidity (nominal and real) on optimal steady-state inflation. For this purpose, we extend the workhorse model of Erceg, Henderson and Levin (2000) by introducing asymmetric menu costs for wage setting. We estimate the key parameters by simulated...

This paper provides estimates of the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to consumer prices for nine central and eastern European EU Member States. Using a five-variate cointegrated VAR (vector autoregression) for each country and impulse responses derived from the VECM (vector error correction...

To forecast an aggregate, we propose adding disaggregate variables, instead of combining forecasts of those disaggregates or forecasting by a univariate aggregate model. New analytical results show the effects of changing coefficients, mis-specification, estimation uncertainty and...

This paper provides evidence on the reliability of euro area real-time output gap estimates. A genuine real-time data set for the euro area is used, including vintages of several sets of euro area output gap estimates available from 1999 to 2006. It turns out that real-time estimates of the...

This paper examines the time varying dispersion in city house price levels across the four biggest euro area countries compared with those in the United States. Using available city-level data over the period 1987-2008, it tests for price convergence and analyses key factors explaining price...

We develop a time-varying transition probabilities Markov Switching model in which inflation is characterised by two regimes (high and low inflation). Using Bayesian techniques, we apply the model to the euro area, Germany, the US, the UK and Canada for data from the 1960s up to the present. Our...

Using the Consensus Economics dataset with individual expert forecasts from G7 countries we investigate determinants of disagreement (crosssectional dispersion of forecasts) about six key economic indicators. Disagreement about real variables (GDP, consumption, investment and unemployment) has a...

In this paper we analyse in a mark-up framework the pass-through of commodity price and exchange rate shocks to the main components of producer and consumer prices. Thereby we link movements in prices at the different production stages as firms set their prices as a mark-up over production...