Italy’s policy of fiscal consolidation and growth-friendly structural reforms has substantially improved its economic prospects, but the adverse sentiment that the country has faced in the sovereign bond market over the past years has deep roots. It reflects lingering anxieties over the euro...

Estimates of the output gap ought to be a useful guide for macroeconomic policy, both for assessing inflationary pressures and fiscal sustainability, but their reliability has been called into question by the large revisions which they are often subject to, particularly around turning points....

This paper investigates whether OECD countries are facing secular stagnation. Secular stagnation is defined as a situation when policy interest rates bounded at zero fail to stimulate demand sufficiently, due to low or negative neutral real interest rates and low inflation, and when ensuing...

This Occasional Paper analyses how significant expansions in central banks' mandates, roles and instruments can result in challenges to the independence of monetary policy. The paper reviews, in particular, some of the key challenges to central bank independence brought about by the global...

What are the quantitative macroeconomic effects of the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB)? I study this question in a nonlinear DSGE model with occasional financial crises, which is calibrated and combined with US data to estimate sequences of structural shocks. Raising capital buffers during...

A transition finance country pilot was initiated by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in partnership with the government of Cabo Verde. The study aims to capture the challenges facing Cabo Verde following graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) to Lower Middle Income Category...

The financial crisis has led to a widespread loss of trust in financial intermediaries of all kinds, perhaps helping to open the way towards the general acceptance of alternative technologies. This paper briefly summarises the crypto-currency phenomenon, separating the ‘currency’ issues from...