The conflict between Russia and Ukraine that started in March 2014 led Western countries and Russia to impose economic sanctions on each other, including the euro zone members. The paper investigates the impact of the sanctions on the real side of the economies of Russia and the euro area. The...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

Is secular stagnation a valid concern for Euro Area countries? We tackle this question using the well-established Laubach-Williams model to estimate the unobservable equilibrium real interest rate and compare it to the actual real rate. We apply our approach to twelve Euro Area countries, since...

Is secular stagnation—a period of persistently lower growth such as that seen following the financial crisis of 2008-09—a valid concern for euro-area countries? We tackle this question using the well-established Laubach-Williams model to estimate the unobservable equilibrium real interest...

Many empirical studies have shown that factor models produce relatively accurate forecasts compared to alternative short-term forecasting models. These empirical findings have been established for different macroeconomic data sets and different forecast horizons. However, various specifications...

This paper explores whether the transmission mechanism between wages and prices in the euro area is affected by the growth regime. Since the great financial crisis inflation developments have posed major puzzles to economists as inflation declined by less than was widely expected during the past...

This paper explores whether the transmission mechanism between wages and prices in the euro area is affected by the growth regime. Since the great financial crisis inflation developments have posed major puzzles to economists as inflation declined by less than was widely expected during the past...