"Leaning against the wind" - a tighter monetary policy than necessary for stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and unemployment around a long-run sustainable rate - has been justified as a way of reducing household indebtedness. In a recent paper Lars Svensson claims that this...

This paper attempts to extend empirical investigations about the asymmetric effects of monetary shocks in the Brazilian economy. We specify and estimate a nonlinear smooth transition vector autoregressive model including output, price level, exchange rate and a monetary policy indicator (Selic...

Using business survey data on German manufacturing firms, this paper provides tests for hypotheses formulated in capital market imperfection theories that predict distributional effects in the transmission of monetary policy. The business conditions of small firms are found to be somewhat more...

This paper analyses the Nairu in the Euro Area and the influence that monetary policy had on its development. Using the Kalman-filter technique we find that the Nairu has varied considerably since the early seventies. The Kalman-filter technique is applied here for the first time using explicit...

This paper estimates a Structural Dynamic Factor Model on a panel of 102 US quarterly series. We model economic comovements by means of five underlying structural shocks (oil price, productivity, aggregate demand, monetary policy, and housing demand). The results of the benchmark model (impulse...

This paper studies the role of the Federal Reserve's policy in the recent boom and bust of the housing market, and in the ensuing recession. By estimating a Structural Dynamic Factor model on a panel of 109 US quarterly variables from 1982 to 2010, we find that, although the Federal Reserve's...

This paper empirically assesses the pros and cons that emanates when the discretionary monetary policy maker aims to achieve the dual objectives of inflation and output. In order to facilitate theoretically plausible empirical analysis a typical case of a discretionary monetary policy s of a...

Inflation in the euro area has been falling since mid-2013, turned negative at the end of 2014 and remained below target thereafter. This paper employs a Bayesian VAR to quantify the contribution of a set of structural shocks, identified by means of sign restrictions, to inflation and economic...

Is the United States best served by a single currency? This question is explored in this paper by looking at the regional effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks through the perspective of the Optimal Currency Area framework. Using monthly state-level data for the period 1983:1 to 2008:3, this...

We study the impact of monetary policy on regional inequality using granular data on economic activity at the city- and county-level in Europe. We document pronounced heterogeneity in the regional patterns of monetary policy transmission. The output response to monetary policy shocks is stronger...