This paper considers the short-term effects of competitiveness shocks on macroeconomic performance in the euro area. Vector autoregressive models are estimated on quarterly data from 1995 to 2013 for individual countries and the whole euro area. The results show that competitiveness shocks help...

This paper considers the short-term effects of competitiveness shocks on macroeconomic performance in the euro area. Vector autoregressive models are estimated on quarterly data from 1995 to 2013 for individual countries and the whole euro area. The results show that competitiveness shocks help...

This paper examines the optimal reaction of fiscal policy to permanent and transitory shocks to output in a model of tax and public consumption smoothing. The model predicts that optimal reaction of public expenditures and deficits to transitory shocks should be counter cyclical, while optimal...

In expectations-driven liquidity traps, a higher inflation target is associated with lower inflation and consumption. As a result, introducing the possibility of expectations-driven liquidity traps to an otherwise standard model lowers the optimal inflation target. Using a calibrated New...

This paper examines the effectiveness of labor cost reductions as a means to stimulate economic activity and assesses the differences which may occur with the prevailing exchange rate regime. We develop a medium-scale three-region DSGE model and show that the impact of a cut in employers' social...

In a rich family of linearized structural macroeconomic models, the counterfactual evolution of the macro-economy under alternative policy rules is pinned down by just two objects: first, reduced-form projections with respect to a large information set; and second, the dynamic causal effects of...

The process of globalization encompasses economic and financial integration. The abolition of capital controls and the dismantling of barriers of different kinds will expose previously sheltered companies to shocks on the global economic arena. Policy-makers in already globalized countries have...

This paper discusses the paper "The Source of Historical Economic Fluctuations: An Analysis using Long-Run Restrictions" by Neville Francis and Valerie A. Ramey. It argues that these authors have made great progress both in the precise measurement of labor input as well as determining the effect...

We explore the implications of shocks to expected future productivity in a setting with limited enforcement of financial contracts. As in Lorenzoni andWalentin (2007) optimal financial contracts under limited enforcement imply that to obtain external finance firms have to post collateral in...

We implement capital in an endogenous separations New Keynesian matching model. In contrast to the vintage capital theory, we suggest a more general approach, such that workers have unrestricted access to a proportional share of the capital stock. We find that the introduction of capital...