German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly...

We estimate the effects of monetary policy on price-setting behavior in administrative micro data underlying the German producer price index. After expansionary monetary policy, the increase in the frequency of price change is economically small, the average absolute size across all price...

We propose a novel framework where forward guidance (FG) is endogenously determined. Our model assumes that a monetary authority solves an optimal policy problem under commitment at the zero-lower bound. FG derives from two sources: 1. from commiting to keep interest rates low at the exit of the...

This work investigates effects of conventional monetary policy and central bank information shocks from monetary policy announcements on the U.S. economy. We identify the surprises caused by changes in target rate and central bank’s private information embedded in high frequency exchange rate...

We analyze differences in consumption and wealth that arise because of different degrees of rationality of households. In particular, we use a standard New Keynesian model and let a certain fraction of households be fully rational while the other fraction possesses less cognitive ability. We...

This paper documents that ECB announcements increase the stock market volatility in the euro area (EA) on the same day. I consider two volatility measures from January 1998 to May 2019. First, a realized volatility measure uses intraday data for 8 different stock market indices. Second, a range...

This paper theoretically analyzes the macroeconomic effects of gender discrimination against women in the labor market in a New Keynesian model. We extend standard frameworks by including unpaid household production in addition to paid labor market work, by assuming that the representative...

Central bank announcements have strong effects on interest rates, but small or even counterintuitive effects on economic expectations. Based on tick-by-tick futures prices on bonds and stock prices, I confirm these seemingly puzzling results for the euro area and provide evidence that they are...

I study the pricing of American Depositary Receipts around FOMC meetings to identify the impact of US monetary policy on managed exchange rates. ADR investors assess the domestic central bank’s reluctance to maintain a currency peg regime if the costs of mimicking policy rate increases in the...

This theoretical model analyzes the impact of interbank credit market dynamics on the resilience of the financial system. Based on a stochastic model of interbank market credit flows, lending in the interbank market is restricted by the availability of liquidity. Following a shock...