After the switch to a floating exchange rate in 1973, the Swiss National Bank at first adopted annual monetary targets and in the 1990s shifted to a medium-term targeting strategy. In this paper I review the SNBu0092s internal policy analysis, an aspect of Swiss monetary targeting that has...

In order to explain the joint fluctuations of output, inflation and the labor market, this paper first develops a general equilibrium model that integrates a theory of equilibrium unemployment into a monetary model with nominal price rigidities. Then, it estimates a set of structural parameters...

We build a stylised 12-country model of the euro area and use it to analyse why differences in national inflation and growth rates arise within the European monetary union. We find that inflation persistence is a key potential explanatory factor. Other more frequently mentioned reasons, like...

We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with rational inattention by households and firms. Consumption responds slowly to interest rate changes because households decide to pay little attention to the real interest rate. Prices respond quickly to some shocks and slowly to other...

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of price setting behaviour in Portugal using the micro-datasets underlying the consumer and the producer price indexes. The main conclusions are the following: 1 in every 4 prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of...

When enough agents do not participate in asset markets, the slope of the aggregate demand curve is reversed. Monetary policy should be passive, to ensure equilibrium determinacy and to minimize variations in output and inflation. This paper presents evidence that asset markets participation in...

In this paper I study the relation between real wage rigidity (RWR) and nominal price and wage rigidity. I show that in a standard DSGE model RWR is mainly affected by the interaction of the two nominal rigidities and not by other structural parameters. The degree of RWR is, however,...

In this paper we address the question on whether EMU has amplified or dampened intra euro area divergencies, by looking at a time-varying VAR model of Italy’s relative performance compared with the rest of the euro area, spanning from 1976 to 2009. Our main result is that EMU does not appear...

This paper addresses the estimation of Phillips curve equations for the euro area while employing less stringent assumptions on the functional correspondence between price inflation, inflation expectations, and marginal costs. Expectations are not assumed to be an unbiased predictor of actual...

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...