Berger, Helge, Dowling, Thomas, Lanau, Sergi, Lian, Weicheng, Mrkaic, Mico, Rabanal, Pau, Sanjani, Marzie Taheri, (2015), “Steady as She Goes— Estimating Potential Output During Financial “Booms and Busts””, IMF, 6 November. Potential output—in the sense of the GDP level or path an economy can sustain over the medium term—is a crucial benchmark for policymakers. However, it is difficult to estimate when financial “booms and busts” are driving the real economy. This paper uses a simple multivariate filtering approach …Read More

Bover, Olympia, Casado, José Maria, Costa, Sonia, Du Caju, Philip, McCarthy,Yvonne, Sierminska, Eva, Tzamourani, Panagiota,  Villanueva, Ernesto, Zavadil,Tibor, (2015), “The Distribution of Debt Across Euro Area Countries: The Role of Individual Characteristics, Institutions and Credit Conditions”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, November. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: …Read More

Bonfiglioli, Alessandra, Gancia, Gino A, (2015), “Economic Uncertainty and Structural Reforms”,Centre for Economic Policy Research, November. Does economic uncertainty promote the implementation of structural reforms? We answer this question using one of the most exhaustive cross-country panel data set on reforms in six major areas and measuring economic uncertainty with stock market volatility. To address endogeneity concerns, we propose various identification strategies, instrumenting uncertainty with world shocks to volatility and with natural disasters, …Read More