Productivity performance in European countries has been a policy concern for some time. This paper shows that productivity can be enhanced by product market policies which, by increasing competition and efficiency, facilitate higher rates of firms' entry and exit (i.e., firm churning). Drawing...

Since the term was first coined in studies on the 1990s Japanese crisis, the concept of zombification has been investigated and revived repeatedly when concerns arise about credit misallocation and stagnating productivity growth in an economy. The starting point for these studies nearly always...

Empirical analyses starting from Laubach and Williams (2003) find that the natural rate of interest is not constant in the long-run. This paper studies the optimal response to stochastic changes of the long-run natural rate in a suitably modified version of the new Keynesian model. We show that,...

This paper investigates the impact on the network growth of the level of merchant discount, the level of Multilateral Interchange Fee (MIF), and the consumers' and the merchants' awareness of positive network effects. In an artificial market, in which issuers and acquirers belong to the same...

We show how to use a simple perturbation method to solve non-linear rational expectation models. Drawing from the applied mathematics literature we propose a method consisting of series expansions of the non-linear system around a known solution. The variables are represented in terms of their...

This paper develops a simple, consistent methodology for generating empirically realistic forward guidance simulations using existing macroeconomic models by modifying expectations about policy announcements. The main advantage of our method lies in the exact preservation of all other shock...

We provide a simple and tractable accounting-based stress-testing framework to assess loss dynamics in the banking sector, in a context of leverage targeting. Contagion can occur through direct interbank exposures, and indirect exposures due to overlapping portfolios with the associated price...

This paper presents a toolkit1 for generating optimal policy projections. It makes five contributions. First, the toolkit requires a minimal set of inputs: only a baseline projection for target and instrument variables and impulse responses of those variables to policy shocks. Second, it solves...

Interconnectedness is an inherent feature of the modern financial system. While it contributes to efficiency of financial services, it also creates structural vulnerabilities: pernicious shock transmission and amplification impacting banks' capitalization. This has recently been seen during the...

We compare networks constructed using five commonly used methods and publicly available daily market data to networks based on reported exposures along several dimensions of the balance sheet, i.e., loans, bonds, equity. Our findings suggest that while the global network structure remains...