In response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have adopted unconventional monetary policy instruments. We investigate if one of these, purchases of long-term government debt, could be a valuable addition to conventional short-term interest rate policy...

The aim of this research is to provide new insights about the limits of borrowing. The second chapter contributes to the theory of limits of borrowing by a study of LOLRs in an original model. The third chapter introduces a new approach to test and measure the limits of borrowing...

Bank managers often claim that equity is expensive relative to debt, which contradicts the Modigliani-Miller irrelevance theorem. This paper combines dividend signalling theories and the Diamond-Dybvig bank run model. An opaque bank must signal its solvency by paying high and stable dividends in...

This paper provides an early warning indicator for bubbles in financial markets. The indicator is based on traditional unit root tests, more precisely on the augmented Dickey-Fuller test and may be used in a repeated manner with rolling samples. The performance of the indicator is tested...

This study explores real time uncertainty in euro area fiscal policies since the late 1990s. Using real time data from the OECD Economic Outlook publications we investigate the impact of real time uncertainty on fiscal planning and debt accumulation separately for two country groups in the euro...

Using the standard real business cycle model with lump-sum taxes, we analyze the impact of fiscal policy when agents form expectations using adaptive learning rather than rational expectations (RE). The output multipliers for government purchases are significantly higher under learning, and fall...

This article empirically studies the linkages between financial variable downturns and economic recessions. We present evidence that real asset prices tend to lead real cycles, while loan-to-GDP and loan-to-deposit ratios lag them. Using a probit analysis, we document that downturns in real...

While it is painfully clear that the ’ever closer’ monetary and financial union in the EU has run into serious trouble there has been very little study of the degree to which the countries have become similar or different in their economic growth dynamics. This paper therefore goes beyond...

In this paper we consider equilibrium behavior in a Dutch (descending price) auction where the bidders are uninformed of their valuations with probability 1-q and can acquire information about their valuation at a positive cost during the auction. We assume that the information acquisition...

This paper investigates the return and volatility responses of major European and the US equity indices to monetary policy surprises using extensive intraday data on 5-minute price quotes along with a comprehensive dataset on monetary policy decisions and macroeconomic news. Our results show...