We lay out a tractable model for fiscal and monetary policy analysis in a currency union, and analyse its implications for the optimal design of such policies. Monetary policy is conducted by a common central bank, which sets the interest rate for the union as a whole. Fiscal policy is...

We study the role of institutional characteristics of mortgage markets in affecting the strength and timing of the effects of monetary policy shocks on house prices and consumption in a sample of OECD countries. With frictionless credit markets, those characteristics should in principle be...

Econometric evidence suggests that, in response to monetary policy shocks, durable and non-durable spending co-move positively, and durable spending exhibits a much larger sensitivity to the shocks. A standard two-sector New Keynesian model with perfect financial markets is at odds with these...

We study optimal monetary policy in two prototype economies with sticky prices and credit market frictions. In the first economy, credit frictions apply to the financing of the capital stock, generate acceleration in response to shocks and the ‘financial markup’ (i.e., the premium on...

We study how the structure of housing finance affects the transmission of monetary policy shocks. We document three main facts: first, the features of residential mortgage markets differ markedly across industrialized countries; second, and ac- cording to a wide range of indicators, the...

I show how to implement in a simple manner the comparison of alternative monetary policy rules in a two-country model of the new generation. These rules are: Full Price Stability, Taylor, Fixed and Managed Exchange Rates. I find, first, that the exchange rate dynamic is non-stationary unless...

Industrial countries moving from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes experience dramatic rises in the variability of the real exchange rate. This evidence, forcefully documented by Mussa (1986), is a puzzle to the extent that it is hard to reconcile with the assumption of flexible prices....

We lay out a tractable small open economy version of the canonical sticky price model, and use it as a framework to study the properties of three alternative monetary regimes: (a) optimal monetary policy, (b) a Taylor rule, and (c) an exchange rate peg. Several interesting results emerge from...

We study optimal monetary policy in two prototype economies with sticky prices and credit market frictions. In the first economy, credit frictions apply to the financing of the capital stock, generate acceleration in response to shocks and the "financial markup" (i.e., the premium on external...