This paper aims to evaluate if frictions in credit markets are important for business cycles in the U.S. and the Euro area. For this purpose, I modify the DSGE financial accelerator model developed by Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) by adding frictions such as price indexation to past...

This paper formulates a dynamic Random Coefficient Model (RCM) to consider a set of popular determinants of public deficits in the EU-15 over the period 1971-2006, both at a country-specific level and from a population-wide perspective. Although the extent of government deficits and debt has...

In this paper we review the methodology of forecasting with log-linearised DSGE models using Bayesian methods. We focus on the estimation of their predictive distributions, with special attention being paid to the mean and the covariance matrix of h-step ahead forecasts. In the empirical...

This paper traces the euro zone's inadequate macroeconomic performance in recent years back to the predominance of a restrictive macroeconomic policy mix based on a 'new monetarist' approach to economic policy. An approach based on a (post-)Keynesian analysis is presented as a growth and...

This paper challenges the view that external shocks caused Euroland's 2001 slowdown and subsequent stagnation. Instead, the design of Euroland's macro policymaking arrangements is found lacking in looking after sufficient domestic demand growth. In the event the ECB has failed on its...

The European Union's constitutional balanced-budget amendment, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), dictates that EU member states keep their budget deficits within three percent of GDP and that government debt be kept at or below 60 percent of GDP. After 20 years, unintended consequences of the...

The New View on fiscal policy (as coined by Furman 2016) represents a rethinking of the mainstream consensus on the optimal macroeconomic policy mix. It focuses on a reassessment of the relative effectiveness of fiscal policy and its ability to stabilize the economy when monetary policy reaches...

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 crystallized the underlying imbalances that are currently acting to tear apart the Euro area monetary and fiscal systems by focusing markets and public attention on the core cause of the overall Euro crisis, the insolvency of the Euro area member-states...

The paper engages with an important aspect of the European crisis, the European banks' reliance on collateralized (repo) market funding, that has received relatively little analytical attention in the scholarship on the European financial and sovereign debt crisis. The paper is guided by three...

This paper investigates why Europe fared particularly poorly in the global economic crisis that began in August 2007. It questions the self-portrait of Europe as the victim of external shocks, pushed off track by reckless policies pursued elsewhere. It argues instead that Europe had not only...