Press releases announcing and explaining monetary policy decisions play a critical role in the communication strategy of central banks. Due to their market-moving potential, it is particularly important how they are drafted. Often, central banks start from the previous statement, and update the...

Almost two decades after the introduction of the common currency, differences in institutional frameworks remain a major source of cross-country heterogeneity in the eurozone. We develop a two-country model with incomplete international markets in which the availability of credit depends on the...

Monetary policy communication is particularly important during unconventional times, because high uncertainty about the economy, the introduction of new policy tools and possible limits to the central bank 's toolkit could hamper the predictability of policy actions. We study how monetary policy...

The paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the European sovereign debt crisis. It tests for contagion (i.e., an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries), fragmentation (a reduction in spillovers) and flight-to-quality patterns, exploiting...

We use internationally comparable household-level data for ten euro area economies and the United States to investigate cross-country differences in debt holdings and the potential of debt overhang. U.S. households have the highest prevalence of both collateralized and non-collateralized debt,...

We study the incidence and severity of lower-bound episodes and the efficacy of three types of state-dependent policies - forward guidance about the future path of interest rates, large-scale asset purchases and spending-based fiscal stimulus - in ameliorating the adverse consequences stemming...

The degree to which domestic prices adjust to exchange rate movements is key to understanding inflation dynamics, and hence to guiding monetary policy. However, the exchange rate pass-through to inflation varies considerably across countries and over time. By estimating structural...