We examine the economic and electoral effects of liberalisation measures using newlyconstructed databases on structural economic reforms and the outcome of democratic elections since the 1970s. The data shows a remarkable slowdown in the pace of liberalisation in both advanced and emerging...

Does time-varying business volatility affect the price setting of firms and thus the transmission of monetary policy into the real economy? To address this question, we estimate from the firm-level micro data of the German IFO Business Climate Survey the impact of idiosyncratic volatility on the...

This paper reconsiders the conventional use of econometric models, especially identified vector autoregressive models, in guiding monetary policy. The main question I explore is whether these models are seriously flawed because they ignore asymmetries in the business cycles. Toward that end,...

Recent theoretical and empirical work has cast doubt on the hypotheses of a linear Phillips curve and a symmetric quadratic loss function underlying traditional thinking on monetary policy. This paper studies the one-period optimal monetary policy problem under an asymmetric loss function...

Abstract For the past decades, income inequality has been on the rise, and so is the frequency of its mentions in recent speeches by central bankers. With the heightened importance of the topic, this research aims to study the impact of monetary policy on income inequality. The study used...

Summary Macroeconomic policy analysis is a challenge for agent-based models because these types of model are generally much elaborated on the specific market levels for partial (micro) markets, but have been of limited use for macroeconomic policy issues due to calibration and “model...

Summary This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of oil price increases in a small two-country monetary union with asymmetric wage adjustment equations. Common oil price shocks lead during the adjustment process to temporary divergences in output and inflation and also to reversals in the...

Summary In this paper, we provide some reflections on the development of monetary theory and monetary policy over the last 150 years. Rather than presenting an encompassing overview, which would be overambitious, we simply concentrate on a few selected aspects that we view as milestones in the...

Summary Planned ‘‘surprise’’ devaluations are often spurred by non-economic circumstances: a rentseeking government; political instability; or the opportunity to put the blame on a predecessor government. In this paper, these aspects are incorporated in the monetary and fiscal policy...