Aggregate exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to import and consumer prices in the EU is currently lower than it was in the 1990s and is non-linear. Low estimated aggregate ERPT to consumer prices does not at all mean that exchange rate movements do not have an impact on inflation, as aggregate ru...
Abstract. The business cycle is alive and well, and real variables respond to it more or less as they always did. Witness the Great Recession. Inflation, in contrast, has gone quiescent. This paper studies the sources of this disconnect using VARs and an estimated DSGE model. It finds that the d...
We study the macroeconomic consequences of financial shocks and increase in economic risk using a quantile vector autoregression. Financial shocks have a negative, but asymmetric impact on the real economy: they substantially increase growth at risk, but have limited impact on upside potential. ...
We examine whether emerging market prudential policies help to reduce the macrofinancial spillover effects of US monetary policy. We find that emerging markets with tighter prudential policies face significantly smaller, and less negative, spillovers to total credit from US monetary policy tight...
We study the incidence and severity of lower-bound episodes and the efficacy of three types of state-dependent policies—forward guidance about the future path of interest rates, large-scale asset purchases and spending-based fiscal stimulus—in ameliorating the adverse consequences stemming from ...
We propose an empirical framework to measure the degree of weakness of the global economy in real-time. It relies on nonlinear factor models designed to infer recessionary episodes of heterogeneous deepness, and fitted to the largest advanced economies (U.S., Euro Area, Japan, U.K., Canada and A...
We consider a standard result of customer market theory: if firms have stable customer relations and face financial frictions, they may keep prices relatively high on their locked-in shoppers to maintain short-term profits at the expense of future market shares in times of low demand and vice v...
Standard economic intuition suggests that asset prices are more sensitive to news than other economic aggregates. This has led many researchers to conclude that asset price data would be very useful for the estimation of business cycle models containing news shocks. This paper shows how to forma...
This paper presents the structure and simulation properties of a core version of QUEST, an open-economy New Keynesian DSGE model developed and maintained by the European Commission. The multi-region model version with tradable goods, non-tradable goods and housing includes the euro area (EA), th...
GAP implements the EU’s Commonly Agreed Methodology (CAM) to estimate the output gap, i.e. the deviation of GDP from its potential, which is one key variable in the fiscal surveillance process emanating from the Stability and Growth Pact. Since 2002 the CAM applies a production function approach...
This paper asks whether a textbook Phillips curve can explain the behavior of core inflation in the euro area. A critical feature of the analysis is that we measure core inflation with the weighted median of industry inflation rates, which is less volatile than the common measure of inflation ex...
This paper is linked to two debates on fiscal policies: first, the implications of low interest- growth differentials for debt sustainability and, second, the reform of the EU fiscal governance framework. In both debates the choice of government debt anchor and the speed of adjustment take centr...
This paper documents a new Search & Matching extension of the basic version of QUEST, the European Commission Dynamic General Equilibrium model used for policy and historical business cycle analysis. The new module is suited for tracking labour market variables such as flows in and out of employ...
We use monthly data on individual loans from the Italian Credit Register over the period from 1997 to 2019 and show that bank credit expansions in the non-financial private sector are mostly explained by variations in the extensive margin calculated either in credit flows or headcount of new bor...
We characterise the distribution of expected GDP growth during the Great Influenza Pandemic (known also as Spanish Flu) using a non-linear method in a country panel setting. We show that there are non-negligible risks of large GDP losses with the 5% left tail of the distribution suggesting a dro...
We study the cyclical dynamics of consumption in the euro area (EA) and the large EA countries by distinguishing durable from nondurable expenditures. We adopt a theoretical partial equilibrium framework to justify the identification strategy of our empirical model, a time-varying parameter stru...
Time-varying parameter (TVP) models have the potential to be over-parameterized, particularly when the number of variables in the model is large. Global-local priors are increasingly used to induce shrinkage in such models. But the estimates produced by these priors can still have appreciable un...
We present non-linear models to capture the turning points in global economic activity as well as in advanced and emerging economies from 1980 to 2017. We first estimate Markov Switching models within a univariate framework. These models support the relevance of three business cycle regimes (rec...
One major characteristics of an optimal currency area is its ability to maintain or foster integration and convergence among its Member States. This objective requires reaching a stable economic and financial situation and developing resilience to shocks. After reviewing the state of convergence...
Slow post-crisis total factor productivity (hereafter TFP) growth is a significant policy challenge for many European countries in general and for Hungary in particular. This report aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of the processes behind productivity growth slowdown in Hungary based o...
Should monetary policy lean against financial stability risks? This has been a subject of fierce debate over the last decades. We contribute to the debate about “leaning against the wind” (LAW) along three lines. First, we evaluate the cost and benefits of LAW using the Svensson (2017) framework...
This paper provides a detailed description of an extended version of the ECB’s New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) of the euro area (cf. Christoffel, Coenen, and Warne 2008). The extended model—called NAWM II—incorporates a rich financial sector with the threefold aim of (i) accounting for a genuine role...
