We study whether the level of household indebtedness is related to the interest rate elasticity of private consumption. Looking at Finnish aggregate data, we find no robust evidence of increased interest rate elasticity of private consumption even as the household sector's debt-to-income ratio...

Savings are, apart from inheritances and transfers, the corner stone for the accumulation of wealth. Against the background of rising economic inequality in industrialized countries and the ongoing assessment of its root causes, analyses of the distribution of savings along the income and wealth...

The primary goal of monetary policy in most economies of the world is to achieve and maintain price stability. This paper evaluates price developments and consumer price indices in south-eastern European countries, i.e. countries that have either recently joined the EU or are candidate or...

The preparations for the introduction of the euro in 1999 involved the need for a new set of statistics for the euro area. Since then, significant progress has been made with regard to the coverage, timeliness and accuracy of these statistics. The reliability of the first releases – i.e. their...

We construct, on the basis of an original methodology and database, composite indices to measure domestic financial development in 26 emerging economies, using mature economies as a benchmark. Twenty-two variables are used and grouped according to three broad dimensions: (i) institutions and...

Although monetary union created the conditions for improving economic and financial integration in the euro area, in the context of the financial and sovereign crises, it has also been accompanied by the emergence of severe imbalances in savings and investment, credit and housing booms in some...

This paper uses a multi region DSGE model with collateral constrained households and residential investment to examine the effectiveness of fiscal policy stimulus measures in a credit crisis. The paper explores alternative scenarios which differ by the type of budgetary measure, its length, the...

The share of private consumption in gross domestic product is significant; therefore, private consumption has a great influence on economic growth, which makes it a major concept in economics. The purpose of the paper is to estimate and evaluate different forecasting models for private...

The paper explains a curious redirection of economic policies that uses the policy framework of Kalecki and Keynes only to undermine it. It does not negate their theory of demand management, but reformulates it to serve the powerful interests of finance in the era of financial globalisation. As...

This documentation describes the data preparation of the new consumption module in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and introduces the content and structure of the generated dataset hconsum. In 2010, the SOEP for the first time included a detailed consumption module in the household...