This paper challenges the view that the observed negative correlation between the Federal Funds rate and the interest rate implied by consumption Euler equations is systematically linked to monetary policy. By using a Monte Carlo experiment, we show that stochastic risk premium disturbances have...

In recent years the issue of the role of asset prices in monetary setting has become increasingly topical since booms and busts in asset market are associated with the fluctuations in overall economic activity through its impacts on aggregate spending. In this study, we use Smooth Transition...

In the wake of the Great Recession, a massive monetary policy stimulus was provided in the main OECD economies. It helped to stabilise financial markets and avoid deflation. Nonetheless, GDP growth has been sluggish and in some countries lower than expected given the measures taken, and...

This paper considers the well established empirical fact that conditional correlations among cross-country interest rates switch signs. Switching implies an alternation of coupling and decoupling of global bond markets over time. This evidence is robust to alternative estimation schemes. Here we...

What is the source of interest rate volatility? Why do low interest rates precede business cycle booms? Most observers tend to assume that monetary policy is largely responsible for it. Indeed, a standard real business cycle model delivers rather small fluctuations in real interest rates. Here,...

We analyze optimal monetary policy and its implications for asset prices, when aggregate demand has inertia and responds to asset prices with a lag. If there is a negative output gap, the central bank optimally overshoots aggregate asset prices (asset prices are initially pushed above their...

One explanation for the usefulness of financial variables as tools for economic forecasting is that they embody the expectations of economic agents about the future state of the economy. In this paper, we test whether interest rate volatility contains information on the expectations of agents...

I show that the long term interest rate that includes a time-varying term premium stabilizes GDP and it does not affect significantly inflation volatility in Poland. I derive this result from an estimated DSGE model of a small open economy. GDP volatility would have been much higher if the...

We study the term structure of default-free interest rates in a sticky-price model with an occasionally binding effective lower bound (ELB) constraint on interest rates and recursive preferences. The ELB constraint induces state-dependency in the dynamics of term premiums by affecting...

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens by households and governments lower aggregate demand, and thus natural interest rates. At the core of the theory is the simple yet under-appreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal...