Since the negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991 expectations on the new European currency could possibly influence European interest rates. The focus of this paper is both on the theoretical and empirical analysis of the link between European Monetary Union (EMU) and German...

This paper analyses the path of private consumption and its main macroeconomic determinants. These are related to the life-cycle approach which helps explaining consumption smoothing. In that respect, it is important to go beyond the simple correlation between current disposable income and...

This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on firms' investment behaviour. The analysis relies on a comprehensive database of Belgian firms covering all sectors of economic activity and firms of all sizes. We proceed in two steps. First, we estimate a reduced-form investment equation...

In this paper we study the role of the exchange rate in conducting monetary policy in an economy with near-zero nominal interest rates as experienced in Japan since the mid-1990s. Our analysis is based on an estimated model of Japan, the United States and the euro area with rational expectations...

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the interest margin of German banks over the period 1995-2007, explicitly addressing differences among different bank groups. We use three empirical models to focus on the following aspects: the time evolution of the interest margin, the average...

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand guides interest rate expectations of financial markets by projections of future short-term rates that are updated only once a quarter. As a consequence, projections become stale when time evolves and new information enters the market. This paper investigates the...

In this paper, we analyse nominal exchange rate and price dynamics after risk shocks with short-term interest rates constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB). We show with a stylized theoretical model that temporary risk shocks may lead to permanent shifts of the exchange rate and the price...

We study the properties of the optimal nominal interest rate policy under different levels of price indexation. In our model indexation regulates the sources of inflation persistence. When indexation is zero, the inflation gap is purely forward- looking and inflation persistence depends only on...