Smets and Wouters () find that at short- and medium-term horizons stochastic variations in the goods market mark-up are the most important source of inflation variability in the euro area. This article shows that an empirically plausible alternative interpretation is that the estimated price...

The paper describes the main transmission channels of the spillovers of national fiscal policies to other countries within the euro area and investigates their magnitude using different models. In the context of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), fiscal spillovers are relevant for the accurate...

We explore the natural rate of interest, shortly r ∗ , in emerging economies. If economic growth originates from convergence, then growth, say, from technological progress will be lower than we find in the data and, hence, r ∗ will be lower. Ignoring convergence upwardly biases our estimates...