Rajan and Zingales (1998) use U.S. Compustat firm data for the 1980s to obtain measures of manufacturing sectors? Dependence on External Finance (DEF). They take any differences in these measures to be structural/technological and thus applicable to other countries. Their joint assumptions about...

In a surprisingly growing number of regions in Germany private "regional currencies" are issued as a cash substitute for the euro. Currently, these regional currencies are conceived almost exclusively as Schwundgeld (depreciative currency), which loses value on a predetermined timescale. This...

This paper develops a theoretical model of dynamic decision-making of a monetary policy committee with heterogeneous members. It investigates the optimal transparency, and the optimal way of transmitting information of committees, by analysing the effects different communication strategies have...

Based on a post-Keynesian model of the relationship between wages, prices and employment, this paper begins by studying the extent to which unit labour cost trends have been responsible for disinflation and deflationary tendencies in Germany and Europe. Thereafter, the reasons for the...

In this paper we carry over a static version of a New Keynesian Macro Model to a monetary union. For a similar approach see Uhlig (2002). We will show in particular that a harmonious functioning of a monetary union critically depends on the correlation structure of shocks that hit the currency...

In an overlapping generations economy, lenders fund risky investment projects of firms by drawing up loan contracts in the presence of an informational asymmetry. An optimal contract entails the issue of only debt, only equity, or a mix of the two. The equilibrium choice of contract depends on...

For the open economy the workhorse model in intermediate textbooks still is the Mundell-Fleming model, which basically extends the IS-LM model to open economy problems. The purpose of this paper is to present a simple New Keynesian model of the open economy, that introduces open economy...

Dieser Artikel beschäftigt sich mit den Unterschieden zwischen Geld- und Fiskalpolitik, die für die unterschiedliche institutionelle Ausgestaltung dieser beiden Bereiche der Wirtschaftspolitik in der Europäischen Union verantwortlich sind. Während die Geldpolitik politisch unabhängig auf...

We develop a utility based model of fluctuations, with nominal rigidities, and unemployment. In doing so, we combine two strands of research: the New Keynesian model with its focus on nominal rigidities, and the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model, with its focus on labor market frictions and...

A number of authors have recently emphasized that the conventional model of unemployment dynamics due to Mortensen and Pissarides has difficulty accounting for the relatively volatile behavior of labor market activity over the business cycle. We address this issue by modifying the MP framework...