Regis Barnichon, Paula Garda, (2016), “Forecasting unemployment across countries: The ins and outs”, European Economic Review, Volume 84, Μάϊος This paper evaluates the flow approach to unemployment forecasting proposed by Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) for a set of OECD countries characterized by very different labor markets. We find that the flow approach yields substantial improvements in forecast accuracy over professional forecasts for all countries, with especially large improvements at longer horizons (one-year …Read More

Tomasz Wieladek, (2016),“The European Central Bank’s QE: A new hope”, CEPR DP 11309, June Estimated on monthly data from 2012M6 to 2016M4. We assess the total impact via a counter-factual exercise, country-by-country and through alternative transmission channels. QE anouncement shocks are identified with four different identification schemes as in Weale and Wieladek (2016). We find that in absence of the first round of ECB QE, real GDP and core CPI …Read More

Elizaveta Krylova, (2016), “Determinants of euro-denominated corporate bond spreads”, ECB Working Paper 1912, June 2016 This paper computes time-varying indicators of the relative importance of different credit spread determinants, including rating, sector and country attribution as well as the coupon rate, maturity and liquidity on the basis of the comprehensive dataset of individual bonds. Additionally, it decomposes variances of rating-specific (country- and sector-specific) spread indices into the impacts of explanatory variables. …Read More

George Economides, Thomas Moutos, (2016), “Can Minimum Wages Raise Workers’ Incomes in the Long Run”, CESifo Working Paper No. 5913, May 2016 Using an intertemporal model of saving and capital accumulation with two types of agents (workers and capitalists) we demonstrate that it is impossible for any binding minimum wage to increase the after-tax incomes of workers if the production function is Cobb-Douglas with constant returns to scale, or if there …Read More

Elena Andreou, Snezana Eminidou, Marios Zachariadis, (2016), “Inflation expectations and monetary policy in Europe”, CEPR DP11306,  June We use monthly data across fifteen euro-area economies for the period 1985:1-2015:3 to obtain different monetary policy shocks pertaining to more versus less informed individuals. We then investigate how these affect inflation expectations of different types of consumers before and after the incidence of the recent Crisis. Shocks obtained based on the assumption that …Read More

Giuseppe Bertola, (2016), “Labor policies and capital mobility in theory and in EMU”, European Economic Review Volume 87, August Europe׳s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was characterized by large international imbalances and uneven national labor market reforms. In this paper׳s model, labor policies that aim to increase the welfare of capital-poor individuals within each country are influenced by financial integration across differently capital-abundant countries. The model predicts that capital outflows should be associated …Read More

Daphne Halikiopoulou, Tim Vlandas, (2016), “Risks, Costs and Labour Markets: Explaining Cross-National Patterns of Far Right Party Success in European Parliament Elections”, Journal of Common Market Studies  Volume 54, Issue 3, May Does the economy affect patterns of far-right party support across countries? This article reconceptualizes micro-level analyses that focus on the effect of unemployment through a framework of costs, risks and the mediating role of labour market institutions. It then derives …Read More

Philip Du Caju, François Rycx, Ilan Tojerow, (2016), “Unemployment risk and over-indebtedness”,ECB WP No. 1908, May We study how unemployment affects the over-indebtedness of households using the new European Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). First, we assess the role of different labor market statuses (i.e. employed, unemployed, disabled, retired, etc.) and other household characteristics (i.e. demographics, housing status, household wealth and income, etc.) to determine the likelihood of over-indebtedness. …Read More

Nicoletta Batini, Giovanni Melina, Stefania Villa, (2016), “Fiscal Buffers, Private Debt, and Stagnation : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, IMF WP No. 16/104 We revisit the empirical relationship between private/public debt and output, and build a model that reproduces it. In the model, the government provides financial assistance to credit-constrained agents to mitigate deleveraging. As we observe in the data, surges in private debt are potentially more damaging for …Read More