This paper uses information from a rich firm-level survey on wage and price-setting procedures, in around 15,000 firms in 15 European Union countries, to investigate the relative importance of internal versus external factors in the setting of wages of newly hired workers. The evidence...

The empirical literature on systemic banking crises (SBCs) has shown that SBCs are rare events that break out in the midst of credit intensive booms and bring about particularly deep and long-lasting recessions. We attempt to explain these phenomena within a dynamic general equilibrium model...

This paper analyses the real-time forecasting performance of the New Keynesian DSGE model of Galí, Smets, and Wouters (2012) estimated on euro area data. It investigates to what extent forecasts of inflation, GDP growth and unemployment by professional forecasters improve the forecasting...

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that price level targeting necessarily increases the volatility of inflation and economic activity. It shows that the optimal policy under commitment for a society that cares only about the variability of output and inflation involves only a...

Using two estimated models for the euro area and the United States, this paper investigates whether the observed difference in the amplitude of the interest rate cycle since 1999 in both areas is due to differences in the estimated monetary policy reaction function, differences in the structure...

Imperfect information has played a prominent role in modern business cycle theory. This paper assesses its importance by estimating the New Keynesian (NK) model under alternative informational assumptions. One version focuses on confusion between temporary and persistent disturbances. Another,...