Following accession to the European Union the big issue for the Czech Republic is to strengthen growth prospects. Growth potential at present is somewhat above 3%, implying a moderate pace of catch-up to living standards in the EU and elsewhere. There is room for greater ambition in growth...

In this paper, we review the macroeconomic literature on financial frictions and banking in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. Our work focuses first on the pioneer articles that have analyzed the amplification effects associated to the financial accelerator. We then shift our attention...