We examine whether low interest rates foster non-viable firms in Europe by analyzing two classes of firms: zombies and distressed. Controlling for the business cycle and recession periods, we find a significantly negative effect of short-term rates on the likelihood of being a zombie, while no...

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium "States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy" at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the chapters in this publication discuss from different...

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy” at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the papers in this publication discuss from different...

We show that firms' nominal required returns to capital (i.e., their discount rates) are sticky with respect to expected inflation. Such nominally sticky discount rates imply that increases in expected inflation directly lower firms' real discount rates and thereby raise real investment. We...

We analyze the phenomenon of zombification in Europe and show that monetary policy alone is not its only driver. Concurring phenomena explain zombie and distressed firms’ prevalence. Using Compustat data on public firms, we find that a rise in short-term interest rates is associated with a...

We analyze optimal monetary policy and its implications for asset prices, when aggregate demand has inertia and responds to asset prices with a lag. If there is a negative output gap, the central bank optimally overshoots aggregate asset prices (asset prices are initially pushed above their...

We estimate a Heterogeneous-Agent New Keynesian model with sticky household expectations that matches existing microeconomic evidence on marginal propensities to consume and macroeconomic evidence on the impulse response to a monetary policy shock. Our estimated model uncovers a central role for...

Using a panel of survey‐based measures of future interest rates from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we study the dynamic relationship between shocks to monetary policy expectations and fluctuations in economic activity and inflation. We propose a smallscale structured recursive vector...

Is the Mundell-Fleming trilemma alive and well? International co-movement of asset prices takes place along side synchronized business cycles, complicating the identification of financial spillovers and assessments of monetary policy autonomy. A benchmark for interest rate co-movement is to...

Using a panel of survey-based measures of future interest rates from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we study the dynamic relationship between shocks to monetary policy expectations and fluctuations in economic activity and inflation. We propose a small-scale structured recursive vector...