Whereas the bulk of the literature on DSGE models provides a rationale for in‡ation targeting strategies, there is no model doing such a job for the strategy implemented for almost ten years now by the Eurosystem and known as the "two-pillar monetary policy strategy". We try to address this issue by developping a small "two-pillar" DSGE model for the euro area. In this paper: 1) we allow real b...

This paper investigates a general procedure to estimate second-order approximations to a DSGE model and compares the performance with the widely used estimation technique for a log-linearized economy on a version of new Keynesian monetary model. It is done in the context of posterior distributions, welfare cost, and impulse response analysis. Our findings include the followings. First, we find ...

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major sour...

Article history: Received 8 February 2010 Available online 11 February 2010 JEL classification: D50 D51 D53 D61 E40 E50 E51 E52 E58

Standard practice for the estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models maintains the assumption that economic variables are properly measured by a single indicator, and that all relevant information for the estimation is summarized by a small number of data series. However, recent empirical research on factor models has shown that information contained in large data sets i...

This paper outlines the evolution of the theory of economic policy from the classical contributions of Frisch, Hansen, Tinbergen and Theil to situations of strategic interaction. Andrew Hughes Hallett has taken an active and relevant part in this evolution, having contributed to both the development and recent rediscovery of the classical theory, with possible relevant applications for model bu...

Is the Federal Reserve at all concerned with stock market performance, as the observation of its recent conduct might seem to suggest? Is there a theoretical scope for such a concern? This paper addresses both questions, presenting and estimating a small structural model that provides a theoretical rationale for looking at equity prices in conducting Monetary Policy. The focus is on the effects...

Beginning with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act of 1989, central banking reforms have focused on assigning clear goals for which monetary policy authorities can be held accountable. Inflation targeting regimes provide examples of such goal-based policy frameworks. An alternative approach, recently argued for by John Taylor (2012, 2014), relies on a rule-based framework in which the policy au...

This paper investigates currency and financial crises in an optimizing general equilibrium model. It is shown that a rise in current and expected future budget deficits generates a real exchange rate appreciation and a decumulation of external assets, leading up to a currency crisis when foreign reserves approximate a critical level. Strong empirical support for our model is obtained by a probi...

Growth of unemployment, employment, vacancies and wages exhibit strong asymmetries between expansionary and contractionary phases of the business cycle. This is also very apparent during the crisis of 2008-2009 for the US and European countries. In this paper we analyse to what degree downward wage rigidities in the bargaining process affect other variables of the labour market, output, inflati...