An important stylized fact to emerge from the VAR estimates is that exogenous monetary policy shocks (also labelled unsystematic monetary policy) have a delayed, persistent, hump shaped effect on inflation. I argue that this empirical pattern is fragile. In particular it disappears when one...

This paper presents a complete set of results describing the effects of monetary policy in 10 countries of the euro area for the pre-EMU period. For each country, we impose one of three identification schemes depending on its monetary integration with Germany, the nominal anchor of the ERM. The...

This paper investigates the role of three likely factors in driving the steady deterioration of the US external balance: US technology developments, changes in the US government fiscal position and the Fed’s monetary policy. Estimating several Vector Autoregressions on US data over the period...

This paper explores the behavior of profits in the four largest euro area countries (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) and the euro area as a whole, while at the same time considering three main sectors (manufacturing, construction and services) in each economy over the period 1988–2010. The...

Academic macroeconomics and the research department of central banks have come to be dominated by Dynamic, Stochastic, General Equilibrium (DSGE) models based on microfoundations of optimising representative agents with rational expectations. We argue that the dominance of this particular sort...

Academic macroeconomics and the research department of central banks have come to be dominated by Dynamic, Stochastic, General Equilibrium (DSGE) models based on micro-foundations of optimising representative agents with rational expectations. We argue that the dominance of this particular sort...