We revisit the theoretical underpinnings of the monetary policy consensus before the Great Recession. We highlight how they resulted from New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models that (i) neglected the actual process of coordination in markets, (ii) saw price rigidity...

What is termed 'globalisation' has taken many forms over the centuries. The last time we had a 'free market' form of globalisation, such as is largely in force across the world today, was in the run up to the First World War; goods, people and capital crossed borders, as the leading industrial...

Despite a number of helpful changes, including the adoption of an inflation target, the Fed's monetary policy strategy proved insufficiently resilient in recent years. While the Fed eased policy appropriately during the pandemic, it fell behind the curve during the post-pandemic recovery. During...

Governments can issue public debt for both good and bad reasons. The former include intertemporal tax smoothing, fiscal stimulus, and asset management. In contrast, the bad reasons, which generate higher indebtedness, are mainly associated with political cycles, rent capture, intergenerational...

Using a modified version of the model presented by Belke and Gros (2007), we analyze the stability of adjustment in a currency union. Using econometric estimates for parameter values we check the stability conditions for the 11 original EMU countries and Greece. We found significant instability...

Results of life satisfaction regressions for more than 91,000 individuals are used to investigate how the macroeconomic crisis of 2008-2009 has affected subjective well-being (SWB) in 30 OECD countries. In a number of countries, the effect of the crisis on a representative person's SWB is of a...

Using a modified version of the model presented by Belke and Gros (2007), we analyze the stability of adjustment in a currency union. Using econometric estimates for parameter values we check the stability conditions for the 11 original EMU countries and Greece. We found significant instability...

In this paper, we explore the benefits from a supply-side oriented fiscal tax policy within the framework of a New Keynesian DSGE model. We show that countercyclical tax rules, which are contingent on the observed welfare gap or alternatively on the markup shock and levied on value added, reduce...

We analyse the long-run imbalances of finance-dominated capitalism underlying the present crisis - which began in 2007 - with a focus on developments in the US and Germany. We argue that beyond inefficient regulation of the financial sector, the severeness of the present crisis has been mainly...

This paper reconsiders the cost of business cycles under incomplete markets. Primarily, we focus on the heterogeneity in the cost of business cycles among agents with different skill levels. Unskilled workers are subject to a much larger risk of unemployment during recessions than are skilled...