Using voting data from the Bank of England, we show that different individual assessments of the economy strongly influence votes after controlling for individual policy preferences. We estimate that internal members form more precise assessments than externals and are also more hawkish, though...

In this paper, I investigate the Bank of Japan?s monetary policy effects under Abenomics at the initial stage. First, I describe briefly what is ?Abenomics? and ?New monetary policy under Abenomics? since April 2013. I also examine the causes of the sharp response of the yen and Japanese stock...

A number of economists, following Professor Hans-Werner SINN, President of the Munich Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (Ifo), have opened a debate on the true significance and the risks entailed by the system of compensation operating within the Eurozone, TARGET2 (Trans-European Automated...

How large should a monetary policy committee be ? Which voting rule should a monetary policy committee adopt ? This paper builds on Condorcet?s jury theorem to analyse the relationships between committee size and voting rules in a model where policy discussions are subject to a time...

We study the interaction between monetary policy and household debt dynamics. To this end, we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where household debt is amortized gradually, and only new loans are constrained by the current value of collateral. Long-term debt implies that...

The aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 has called the export-led growth model of many Asian economies into question. This paper describes the contribution that macroeconomic policy can make to promote a rebalancing of growth away from dependence on exports to developed...

The relative availability of bond and bank financing should affect the firm's external financing and investment decisions. We define a measure that proxies for the regional borrowing inflexibility to substitute between bank and bond financing: “debt inflexibility”. Debt inflexibility tilts...

The VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, strongly co-moves with measures of the monetary policy stance. When decomposing the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility (“uncertainty”), we find that a lax monetary policy decreases...

We combine questions from the Michigan Survey about future inflation, unemployment, and interest rates to investigate whether households are aware of the basic features of U.S. monetary policy. Our findings provide evidence that some households form their expectations in a way that is consistent...