We explore the macroeconomic impact of a compression in the long-term bond yield spread within the context of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 via a Bayesian time-varying parameter structural VAR. We identify a 'pure' spread shock which, leaving the short-term rate unchanged by construction,...

Building upon the insight that M1 velocity is the permanent component of nominal interest rates - see Benati (2020) - I propose a novel, and straightforward approach to estimating the natural rate of interest, which is conceptually related to Cochrane's (1994) proposal to estimate the permanent...

Since the XIX century, technological progress has allowed commercial banks to create ever greater amounts of broad money and credit starting from a unit of monetary base. Crucially, however, at the very low frequencies the relative amounts of the two aggregates created out of a unit of base...

Evidence from monetary VARs for ten countries points towards an unfavorable trade-off between leaning against credit fluctuations and stabilizing real economic activity. Results are robust both across countries, and based on two alternative approaches, i.e. either (i) focusing on the impact of...

Data from 20 hyperinflations - from the French Revolution to Venezuela's 2018 episode - provide nearly no evidence of a Laffer curve for seignorage. Rather, in nearly all cases, the relationship between the inflation tax and inflation has been either positive at all inflation rates, or initially...