This paper uses mortgage data to construct a measure of terms on which households access to external finance, and relates it to consumption at both the aggregate and cohort levels. The Household External Finance (HEF) index is based on the spread paid by risky borrowers in the mortgage market....

This paper offers a preliminary evaluation of ECB conduct of monetary policy by estimating a fairly general reaction function for the euro area. The specification of the policy rule embodies a number of nonlinearities which are shown to stem from asymmetric preferences and a convex aggregate...

US monetary policy is characterized by a substantial degree of inertia. While in principle this may well be the outcome of an optimizing central bank behaviour, the ability of any derived policy rule to match the data relies on so large weights for interest rate smoothing into policy makers'...

Inflation in the most industrialized economies of the world has an important international common component that accounts for the historical decline in the national rates. Country specific conditions explain the rise in inflation volatility of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the subsequent...

Was the Great Moderation in the United States due to good policy or good luck? Taking, as data generation process, a New Keynesian sticky-price model in which the only source of change is the move from a passive to an active monetary rule, we show how standard econometric methods, both...

The announced primary objective of the European Central Bank is price stability. While no restrictive reference is given to how the goal should be reached, such a mandate can be thought as a concern to stabilize some relevant macroeconomic aggregates. Accordingly, we frame ECB monetary policy in...

JEL Classification: E52, E58

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of a new framework for monetary policy analysis in which the decision makers are allowed to weight differently positive and negative deviations of inflation and output from the target values. Reduced-form and structural estimates of the central...

This paper offers an alternative explanation for the great inflation of the 1970s by measuring a novel source of monetary policy time inconsistency. In the presence of asymmetric preferences, the monetary authorities generate a systematic inflation bias through the private-sector expectations of...

This paper presents a critical survey of some recent developments in the theory of international trade. Particular emphasis is given to the role of increasing returns to scale and labor mobility in shaping the pattern of industrial location across integrating countries. The goal is to review and...