The European Central Bank is unique in setting monetary policy for several sovereign states with heterogeneous debt levels and different maturity structures. The monetary-fiscal nexus is central to the functioning of the euro area. We focus on one particular aspect of that nexus, the effect the...

In this contribution we link the recently re-discovered tendencies towards stagnation with the features of financialisation, which have started to dominate developed capitalist economies in the early 1980s. We review the main macroeconomic channels of transmission of financialisation-namely, the...

This paper uses the SVAR methodology to investigate the effects of public investment on growth, and more specifically, the effects of the introduction of a golden rule of public finance. We extend the existing literature by estimating a model of the British economy that takes into account long...

Growing literature on the effects of fiscal policy has evolved in the recent years. The availability of narrative methods has improved the validity and precision of macroeconometric methods. This paper uses narratively identified tax changes in a Proxy SVAR framework to empirically assess the...

We investigate the effects of UK monetary policy from 1974-2001 using a structural vector autoregression with quarterly data. We adapt Uhlig's (2001) sign restriction identification methodology and show that shocks which can reasonably be described as monetary policy shocks have played a very...

The diffusion of the use of various forms of impact assessments (IAs) in different political settings and legal traditions illustrates the great malleability of the tool. This diversity is not only reflected in the adoption of different models of IA across the various jurisdictions examined, but...

In the past decade or so, a number of central banks have purchased assets financed by the creation of central bank reserves as a tool for loosening monetary policy – a policy often known as ‘quantitative easing' or ‘QE'. The first half of the paper reviews the international evidence on the...

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Scotland had a stable financial system. Its stability arose from the pressure that private banks, which had the right to issue bank notes, placed on each other to behave prudently. Unlike in England, the Scottish banking system had no central...

There are frequent calls for financial markets to be more actively regulated by state agencies, such as the Financial Conduct Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority. They reflect neo-classical, market-failure approaches to economics, which suggest that the market does not maximise...

Supporters of free markets often have a general feeling that there is too much regulation or that it is too intrusive, badly formulated, and ineffective. However, proponents of these positions are often lacking in empirical evidence and are susceptible to accusations of either exaggerating the...