This paper contributes to the policy evaluation literature by developing new strategies to study alternative policy rules. We compare optimal rules to simple rules within canonical monetary policy models. In our context, an optimal rule represents the solution to an intertemporal optimization...

This note argues that the solutions to the euro-area crisis proposed by the EU governing institutions in cooperation with the IMF, based on further austerity and wage cuts, will worsen the crisis. They are unlikely to reduce both sovereign and external debt ratios of countries experiencing these...

This paper illustrates different scenarios of implementing an emissions trading scheme and investigates the economic implications of diverse baseline development paths and an additional limitation or ceiling on emissions trading. The analysis focuses on the impacts of dissimilar emissions...

Fixed Capital has a major role in economic growth literature and on the estimation of potential output using a production function - which is essential to design macroeconomic policy. One of the main contributions of this work, differently from the previous works, is to estimate the capital...

Ein staatliches Investitionsprogramm zum Anschub schnelleren Wachstums wird in den Krisenländern der Europäischen Währungsunion von vielen gewünscht. Die Europäische Währungsunion hat dazu eine Investitions-Initiative gestartet. Aktuell wird diskutiert, ob diese zusätzlichen staatlichen...

Using the approach suggested by Gabaix (Econometrica 2011) this paper demonstrates that idiosyncratic shocks in the largest firms are important for an understanding of aggregate volatility in German manufacturing industries. The implications of this finding for theoretical and empirical research...