Why do advanced economies fall into prolonged periods of economic stagnation, particularly in the aftermath of credit booms? We present a model of persistent aggregate demand shortage based on strong liquidity preferences of households, in which we incorporate financial imperfections to study...

How countercyclical macroprudential credit policies affect the loan spread? To answer this question, we propose a microeconomic model of bank competition that contemplates differences in the behavior of public and private banks and the peculiarities of the market for corporate loans vis-a-vis...

Since March 2020, central banks in major economies have been monetising government deficits by purchasing a significant part of the new debt issued by the government. In the UK, this has resulted in the rate of growth of money broadly-defined (M4) reaching an extraordinary 14% in 2020. Advocates...

A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen–WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on...

This paper critically assesses the rise of central bank independence (CBI) as an apparent success story in modern monetary economics. As to the observed rise in CBI since the late 1980s, we single out the role of peculiar German traditions in spreading CBI across continental Europe, while its...

The paper presents and analyses the structure and consequences of limits to growth for the global economy. Apart from the famous report for the Club of Rome, a wide range of related literature, which all caution against the idea of unrestricted growth, is also covered. In presenting side tracks...

Several authors speak about the menace and collapse of our present civilization. The contemporary crisis is often properly associated with the relentless growing consumption in the pursuit of personal wants in the developed countries concomitant with poverty diffusion without precedent and with...

The central banking literature regards central bank independence and a transparent monetary policy as best suited to achieve and safeguard monetary stability. The existing empirical literature, however, failed in establishing a solid ground for this consensus. This paper sheds some new light on...

Recently, the U. S. subprime crisis has shown that a weak collateralization of credits may have massive economic implications, entailing severe perturbations of the international financial system. We focus on central bank lending and try to pin down the quantitative impact of the...

Does the proliferation of aid donors lead to visible changes in the world of foreign assistance? Aid provided by low- and middle-income countries, autocratic regimes and donors operating outside the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD is gaining in importance. This article uses...