The main problem facing policymakers during the corona virus pandemic is how to mitigate its humanitarian and economic costs. Doing so invariably involves trading off some costs against others as well as short-term against longer-term consequences. We provide an overview of economic literature...

We document a remarkable increase in economic belief polarization - disagreement - regarding the future state of the economy across Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. We find evidence suggesting that belief polarization may have impeded the implementation of pandemic response measures such as...

I propose a theory of information production and learning in credit markets in which the incentives to engage in activities that reveal information about aggregate fundamentals vary over the business cycle and may account for both the excessive optimism that fueled booms preceding financial...

I construct a novel measure of household uncertainty based on survey data for European countries. I show that household uncertainty shocks do not universally behave like negative demand shocks. Notably, household uncertainty shocks are largely inflationary in Europe. Further analysis, including...

Since the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2003 strategy review, the importance of macro-financial amplification channels for monetary policy has increasingly gained recognition. This paper takes stock of this evolution and discusses the desirability of further incremental enhancements in the...

We study the implications of forging stronger political ties with the US on the sensitivities of stock returns around the world to a global common factor - the global financial cycle. Using voting patterns at the United Nations as a measure of political ties with the US along with various...