We study the effect of the size of the welfare state on family outcomes in OECD member countries. Exploiting exogenous variation in public social spending, due to varying degrees of political fractionalization (i.e. the number of relevant parties involved in the legislative process), we show...

We analyze the influence of the fiscal position on the transmission of government spending shocks in a New Keynesian model. We find that once we allow for positive levels of government debt in the steady state, the sign and the size of the fiscal multiplier depend strongly on the horizon at...

In this paper we analyze how the availability of credit influences the relationship between government size as a proxy for fiscal stabilization policy and the amplitude of business cycle fluctuations in a sample of advanced OECD countries. Interpreting relatively low loan-tovalue ratios as an...

We develop a simple experimental setting to evaluate the role of the Taylor principle, which holds that the nominal interest rate has to respond more than one-for-one to fluctuations in the inflation rate. In our setting, the average inflation rate fluctuates around the inflation target if the...

In this paper we study the role of financial systems for the cost channel transmission of monetary policy in a calibrated business cycle model. We analyze the different effects that monetary policy has on the economy, in particular on output and inflation, which are due to differences in...

In this paper we analyze equilibrium determinacy in a sticky price model in which the pass-through from policy rates to retail interest rates is sluggish and potentially incomplete. In addition, we empirically characterize and compare the interest rate pass-through process in the euro area and...

We study nominal exchange rate dynamics in the aftermath of U.S. monetary policy announcements. Using high-frequency interest rate and stock price movements around FOMC announcements, we distinguish between pure monetary policy shocks and information shocks, which are associated with new...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of VAR and ARIMA models to forecast Austrian HICP inflation. Additionally, we investigate whether disaggregate modelling of five subcomponents of inflation is superior to specifications of headline HICP inflation. Our modelling procedure...

In this paper we apply factor models proposed by Stock and Watson [18] and VAR and ARIMA models to generate 12-month out of sample forecasts of Austrian HICP inflation and its subindices processed food, unprocessed food, energy, industrial goods and services price inflation. A sequential...

This paper explores whether a limited participation model of the monetary transmission mechanism can account for the observed response of stock market returns to monetary policy shocks. It is found that the model generates responses that broadly match the empirical counterparts, although the...