After almost six years with official interest rates at close to zero and with numerous unconventional measures still in place, 2014 is witnessing the beginning of the process of monetary normalisation in those economies, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, in which the recovery...

We show that the single-index dynamic factor model developed by Aruoba and Diebold (Am Econ Rev, 100:20-24, 2010) to construct an index of US business cycle conditions is also very useful for forecasting US GDP growth in real time. In addition, we adapt the model to include survey data and...

This paper describes the revenue-raising capacity and structure of the Spanish tax system, in comparison with the economies of the European Union. Spain stands out for the low weight of its tax revenues in GDP relative to the EU27 average. This lower weight of tax revenue is mainly a consequence...

This paper describes the methods of the fourth wave of the Spanish Survey of Household Finances (EFF2011), paying special attention to the innovations relative to the previous waves. The EFF2011 was designed to give continuity to the information on household finances collected through the...

This paper examines the links between productivity and social welfare, with an application to the banking industry. It models spatial price competition between bank branches jointly with banks’ decisions on the opening or closing of branches based on profit expectations. The model predicts...

We compare labor market outcomes under firm-level and sector-level bargaining in a one-sector Mortensen-Pissarides economy with firm-specific productivity shocks. Our main theoretical results are twofold. First, unemployment is lower under firm-level bargaining Second, introducing efficient...

We study the dynamics of a Lucas-tree model with finitely lived agents who “learn from experience.” Individuals update expectations by Bayesian learning based on observations from their own lifetimes. In this model, the stock price exhibits stochastic boom-and-bust fluctuations around the...

Housing prices diverge from construction prices after 1997 in four major countries. Besides, TFP differences between construction and the general economy account for the evolution of construction prices in the U.S. and Germany, but not in the U.K. and Spain.

This paper offers an evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure. Drawing from a large data set of infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000, and using a panel time-series approach, the paper estimates a long-run aggregate production function...

Since the start of the Great Recession the unemployment rate in Spain has risen by almost 18 percentage points. The unemployment crisis is affecting all population groups, including the more highly educated; but it is even more acute for the foreign population, whose unemployment rate is close to...