This paper develops a parsimonious model of individual exposure and of public health policy that can be used to study the evolution of an epidemic and the optimal use of lockdown policies and other non-pharmaceutical interventions. At the heart of individual exposure choices are the trade-offs...

This paper explicitly models strategic interaction between two independent national fiscal authorities and a single central bank in a simple New Keynesian model of a monetary union. Monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Coordination of fiscal policies...

This paper develops a model of a fiscally sound monetary union and analyses central bank purchases of long-term debt (QE). Employing the portfolio balance channel, we show that there exists an interest rate rule augmented by QE at the lower bound which replicates the equilibrium allocation and...

Recent work on financial frictions in New Keynesian models suggest that there is a sizable spread between the risk-less interest rate and the borrowing rate. We analyze the optimal policy mix of monetary and fiscal authorities in a currency union with a country-specific credit spread by...

We use a dynamic game model of a two-country monetary union to study the impacts of an exogenous fall in aggregate demand, the resulting increase in public debt, and the consequences of a sovereign debt haircut for a member country or bloc of the union. In this union, the governments of...

We fielded a representative survey among the German population randomly assigning respondents to various unconventional monetary policy scenarios that raise household income. We find that in all policy treatments people spend almost 40% of the transfer. Spending shares are independent of whether...

We study the effects and transmission channels of non-standard monetary policy in the euro area using structural vector autoregressions, identified with an external instrument. The instrument is the common component of unexpected variations in euro area sovereign yields vis-à-vis Germany for...

Against the backdrop of elevated model uncertainty in DSGE models with a detailed modeling of financial intermediaries, we investigate the performance of optimized macroprudential policy rules within and across models. Using three canonical banking DSGE models as a representative sample, we show...

Modifying the mandate of a discretionary central bank to include an interest-rate smoothing objective increases the welfare of an economy where large contractionary shocks occasionally force the central bank to lower the policy rate to its effective lower bound. The central bank with an...