Published in late 2017, the Italian medium-term fiscal plan aims to achieve structural balance by 2020, although concrete, high-quality measures to meet the target are yet to be specified. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by (i) assessing spending patterns to identify areas for...

This paper seeks to quantify the net benefits of a comprehensive reform package aimedat addressing Italy's inter-related challenges. Specifically, it simulates the growth andcompetitiveness effects of a package of fiscal, financial, wage bargaining, and otherstructural reforms. Credible...

This paper seeks to quantify the net benefits of a comprehensive reform package aimed at addressing Italy's inter-related challenges. Specifically, it simulates the growth and competitiveness effects of a package of fiscal, financial, wage bargaining, and other structural reforms. Credible...

We develop a semi-structural new-Keynesian open-economy model, with separate food and non-food inflation dynamics, for forecasting and monetary policy analysis in low-income countries and apply it to Kenya. We use the model to run several policy-relevant exercises. First, we filter international...

This paper studies economic and financial spillovers from the euro area to Poland in a two-country semi-structural model. The model incorporates various channels of macrofinancial linkages and cross-border spillovers. We parameterize the model through an extensive calibration process, and...

This paper discusses several popular methods to estimate the ‘output gap’. It provides a unified, natural concept for the analysis, and demonstrates how to decompose the output gap into contributions of observed data on output, inflation, unemployment, and other variables. A simple bar-chart...

This paper introduces methods that allow analysts to (i) decompose the estimates of unobserved quantities into observed data, (ii) to better understand revision properties of the model, and (iii) to impose subjective prior constraints on path estimates of unobserved shocks in structural economic...

This paper extends the long-run growth model of Esfahani et al. (2009) to a labor exporting country that receives large inflows of external income?the sum of remittances, FDI and general government transfers?from major oil-exporting economies. The theoretical model predicts real oil prices to be...