We consider the optimality of various institutional arrangements for agencies that conduct macro-prudential regulation and monetary policy. When a central bank is in charge of price and financial stability, a new time inconsistency problem may arise. Ex-ante, the central bank chooses the...

Many consumers below the top of the distribution of a representative population by cognitive abilities barely react to monetary and fiscal policies that aim to stimulate consumption and borrowing, even when they are financially unconstrained and despite substantial debt capacity. Differences in...

This paper tests one specific monetary transmission mechanism through households: portfolio rebalancing. We use a unique panel dataset of household's credit and debit card spending, ATM withdrawals, financial investments into risky assets such as mutual funds and equities, as well as bank...

We document that a large fraction of a representative population of men—those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ)—barely reacts to measures of monetary and fiscal policy that aim at influencing their leverage and durable spending decisions. To the contrary, high-IQ...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men – those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) – do not change their consumption propensities...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men - those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) - do not change their consumption propensities with...

Binding lower bounds on interest rates and large government deficits limit the scope of fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate households' spending through financial intermediaries and firms. Policymakers have thus been implementing unconventional policies that aim to increase households'...

The empirical effectiveness of economic policies that operate theoretically through similar channels differs substantially. We document this fact by comparing an easy-to-grasp expectations-based policy, unconventional fiscal policy, with a policy whose implications are harder to understand by...

Unconventional fiscal policies incentivize households to accelerate consumption by generating future consumer price ination, and offer an alternative to unconventional monetary policy (Correia et al. (2013)). We use a natural experiment to study the causal effect of unconventional fiscal...

To analyze the effectiveness of stabilization policies which includes effects on households future income it is central to account for anticipation effects on consumption. We investigate this using high-frequency spending and balance sheet data from a major Danish bank. We examine the behavior...