Following the increase in private-sector indebtedness before the 2008 Great Recession, balance sheet adjustment by the most indebted agents will be a necessary condition for achieving balanced growth. This paper analyses the deleveraging of the non-financial private sector in four countries that...

Inflation-indexed bonds are fixed-income securities whose nominal cash flows are adjusted to an inflation index. In countries where these securities exist, inflation expectations are sometimes estimated as the spread between the nominal yield on a conventional bond and the real yield on an...

This paper develops and estimates a game-theoretical model of inflation targeting where the central banker's preferences are asymmetric around the targeted rate. In particular, positive deviations from the target can be weighted more, or less, severely than negative ones in the central banker's...

One of the most striking macroeconomic phenomena in recent decades has been the achievement of rather low and more stable rates inflation in many countries in the nineties. Consequently, the main goal of this paper is to offer an overview of the main policy issues arising in a low inflation...

We provide evidence on the fit of the New Phillips Curve (NPC) for the Euro area over the period 1970-1998, and use it as a tool to compare the characteristics of European inflation dynamics with those observed in the U.S. We also analyse the factors underlying inflation inertia by examining the...

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, we characterize de Fed's systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for US output, hours and inflation. Second we evaluate the extent to which that responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule in the...

This paper investigates the existence and determinants of interest rates dispersion in loans and deposits of Spanish banks. A unique feature of the research is that it covers a whole industry (thirty products and two hundred banks) from 1989 to 2003. We find that: i) interest rates dispersion is...

We analyse the incidence of endogenous entry and firm TFP-heterogeneity on the response of aggregate inflation to exogenous shocks. We build up an otherwise standard DSGE model in which the number of firms is endogenously determined and firms differ in their steady state level of productivity....

The paper presents a theory of nominal asset prices for competitively owned oil. Focusing on monetary effects, with flexible oil prices the US dollar oil price should follow the aggregate US price level. But with rigid nominal oil prices, the nominal oil price jumps proportionally to nominal...