Policymakers often use the output gap, a noisy signal of economic activity, as a guide for setting monetary policy. Noise in the data argues for policy caution. At the same time, the zero bound on nominal interest rates constrains the central bank's ability to stimulate the economy during...

Introducing bounded rationality into a standard consumption based asset pricing model with a representative agent and time separable preferences strongly improves empirical performance. Learning causes momentum and mean reversion of returns and thereby excess volatility, persistence of...

We document the presence of sizable distributional effects from unexpected price level movements in the Euro Area (EA) using sectoral accounts and newly available data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. The EA\ as a whole is a net winner of unexpected price level increases, with...

We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively...