We provide non experimental evidence of the relevance of sociability on subjective wellbeing by investigating the determinants of life satisfaction on a large sample of Europeans aged above 50. We document that voluntary work, religious attendance, helping friends/neighbours and participation to...

We decompose aggregate consumption by modelling both savers and their links to collateral constrained borrowers through a bank which prices credit risk. Savers own both firms and the commercial bank while borrowers require loans from the commercial bank to effect their consumption plans. The...

Prior to the financial crisis mainstream monetary policy practice had become disconnected from money. We outline the basic rationale for this development using a simple model of money and credit in which we explore the conditions under which money matters directly for the conduct of policy....

Asset mis-pricing may reflect investor psychology; and excess volatility can arise from switches of sentiment. For a floating exchange rate where fundamentals follow a random walk, we show that excess volatility can be generated by the repeated entry and exit of currency 'bulls' and 'bears' with...

Following a conjecture of Kozicki and Tinsley we generalises the habit formation model of consumption to allow for both a multiplicative utility function and a habit\aspiration function which is a geometrically weighted average of past consumption. The geometric form of the aspiration function...

The financial crisis and its aftermath has stimulated a vigorous debate on the use of macro-prudential instruments for both regulating the banking system and for providing additional tools for monetary policy makers. The widespread adoption of non-conventional monetary policies has provided some...