The recent decline in euro area inflation has triggered new calls for additional monetary stimulus by the ECB in order to counter the threat of a self-reinforcing deflation and recession spiral. This note reviews the available evidence on inflation expectations, output gaps and other factors...

In dieser Studie werden die makroökonomischen Auswirkungen verschiedener Fiskalkonsolidierungspläne von Ländern der Eurozone analysiert. Dafür wird ein theoretisch fundiertes makroökonomisches Modell genutzt. Die Eignung des Modells und die Wichtigkeit verschiedener Features wie...

The ECB’s recently launched Expanded Asset Purchasing Programme is similar to the quantitative easing programmes undertaken by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. While theory suggests that quantitative easing can stimulate economic growth and spur inflation via...

Following a weak start into 2015, the global economy is expected to pick up again in the course of this year. Average annual world output growth will nevertheless remain sluggish at 3.4 percent on a purchasing power parity weighted basis, before accelerating modestly to 3.8 percent next year....

The Euro Area is characterized by little variation in unemployment and strongly procyclical labor productivity. We capture both characteristics in a New Keynesian business cycle model with labor search frictions, where labor can vary along three margins: employment, hours, and effort. We...

Output gap revisions can be large even after many years. Real-time reliability tests might therefore be sensitive to the choice of the final output gap vintage that the real-time estimates are compared to. This is the case for the Federal Reserve's output gap. When accounting for revisions in...