This paper offers an alternative explanation for the behavior of postwar US inflation by measuring a novel source of monetary policy time-inconsistency due to Cukierman (2002). In the presence of asymmetric preferences, the monetary authorities end up generating a systematic inflation bias...

This paper analyses the international transmission of monetary shocks with a special focus on the effects of foreign money ("global liquidity") on the euro area. We estimate structural VAR models for the euro area and the global economy including a global liquidity aggregate. The impulse...

The present paper analyses currency in circulation in the euro area since the beginning of the 1980s. After a comprehensive literature review on this topic we present some stylised facts on currency holdings in the euro area countries as well as at an aggregate euro area level. The next chapter...

This paper investigates the performance of optimised interest rate rules when there is uncertainty about a key determinant of the monetary transmission mechanism, namely the degree of persistence characterising the inflation process. The paper focuses on the euro area and utilises two variants of...

Policy attention to the security industry increased substantially after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001. With an increased demand for security, the global security market grew a tenfold to around €100 billion in 2011. Many studies expect that growth of the worldwide...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, for West Germany, France, Italy and US, we econometrically select within a SVAR model some fiscal policy regimes, i.e. a u0094set of rulesu0094 for the implementation of fiscal policies. Second, we identify the fiscal policy shocks related to different...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...