This paper studies the relationship between the business cycle and financial intermediation in the euro area. We establish stylized facts and study their stability during the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Long-term interest rates have been exceptionally high and...

The paper presents a framework for analyzing the degree of financial transmission between money, bond and equity markets and exchange rates within and between the United States and the euro area. We find that asset prices react strongest to other domestic asset price shocks, and that there are...

In an analytically tractable model of the global economy, we calculate the Pareto improvement where a country experiencing a favourable supply side shock consumes more against expected future output and spreads the risk by selling shares. With capital inflows to finance the "New Economy";...

We estimate a two-country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model for the US and the euro area including relevant housing market features and examine the monetary policy implications of housing-related disturbances. In particular, we derive the optimal monetary policy cooperation consistent...

This paper presents information on wage bargaining institutions, collected using a standardised questionnaire. Our data provide information from 1995 and 2006, for four sectors of activity and the aggregate economy, considering 23 European countries, plus the US and Japan. Main findings include...