The paper explores the precarious balance between modernizing monetary systems by means of digital currencies (either issued by the central bank itself or independently) and safeguarding financial stability as also ensured by tangible payment (and saving) instruments like paper money. Which...

Official statistics measuring the cost of living are known to suffer from several biases because they often do not accurately capture substitution patterns, product entry/exit, and preference shifts. In particular, the latter two biases have been shown to be large on average. This paper shows...

This paper shows that macroeconomic uncertainty affects the housing market in two significant ways. First, uncertainty shocks adversely a¤ect housing prices but not the quantities that are traded. Controlling for a broad set of variables in fixed-effects regressions, we find that uncertainty...

Der ökonomische Mainstream steht seit Ausbruch der Finanzkrise 2007/08 vermehrt unter Kritik, hatten doch nur wenige Fachwissenschaftler die Krise vorhergesehen. In der entstandenen Debatte über Ausrichtung und Methoden in der Volkswirtschaftslehre wird auch eine Rückbesinnung auf...

To be useful as a guide to behavior, a model that includes a relationship between x_t and z_t+1 must specify whether x_t is influenced by the expectation at t of z_t+1 or, that z_t+1 is inertially influenced by x_t. We show that, for a broad class of linear RE models, distinct causal...

This paper estimates the response of consumer prices to a monetary policy shock in Switzerland. We find that there is no evidence of a price puzzle at the aggregate level. This is because our factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) avoids misspecification by including more information...

This paper considers price setting in pure units of account, linked to the means of payment through managed parities. If prices are sticky in the units in which they are set, parity changes may facilitate equilibrium adjustment of relative prices. The paper derives simultaneously the optimal...

How well can a cryptocurrency serve as a means of payment? We study the optimal design of cryptocurrencies and assess quantitatively how well such currencies can support bilateral trade. The challenge for cryptocurrencies is to overcome double-spending by relying on competition to update the...