Microfoundations of the euro’s effect on euro area trade hinge on the timing, the speed and the size of adjustment in trade costs. We estimate timing, speed and size of adjustment in trade costs for sectoral trade data. Our approach allows for sector specific impacts of trade costs on sectoral trade while controlling for unobserved but time-variant variables at the sector level. We find that, due to falling trade costs, trade within the euro area increases between the years 2000 and 2003 by 10 to 20 percent compared with trade between European countries that are not members of the euro area. Adjustment of individual sectors is extremely fast whereas aggregate adjustment spreads out because different sectors adjust at distinct times.

This paper analyzes bilateral contracting in an environment with contractual incompleteness and asymmetric information. One party (the seller) makes an unverifiable quality choice and the other party (the buyer) has private information about its valuation. A simple exit option contract, which allows the buyer to refuse trade, achieves the first–best in the benchmark cases where either quality is verifiable or the buyer’s valuation is public information. But, when unverifiable and asymmetric information are combined, exit options induce inefficient pooling and lead to a particularly simple contract. Inefficient pooling is unavoidable also under the most general form of contracts, which make trade conditional on the exchange of messages between the parties. Indeed, simple exit option contracts are optimal if random mechanisms are ruled out.

International trade patterns at the product level are surprisingly dynamic. The majority of trade relationships exist for just a few, often only one to three, years. In this paper, I examine empirically the duration in German import trade at the 8-digit product level from 1995 to 2005\. I find that survival probabilities are affected by exporter characteristics, product type and market structure. Specifically, I show that the duration of exporting a product to Germany is longer for products obtained from countries that are economically large and geographically close to Germany; for products with large trade value and a low elasticity of substitution; and for trade pairs that command a large share of the German import market and are characterized by two-way trade.

We use a mean-adjusted Bayesian VAR model as an out-of-sample forecasting tool to test whether money growth Granger-causes inflation in the euro area. Based on data from 1970 to 2006 and forecasting horizons of up to 12 quarters, there is surprisingly strong evidence that including money improves forecasting accuracy. The results are very robust with regard to alternative treatments of priors and sample periods. That said, there is also reason not to overemphasize the role of money. The predictive power of money growth for inflation is substantially lower in more recent sample periods compared to the 1970s and 1980s. This cautions against using money-based inflation models anchored in very long samples for policy advice.

This paper explores the factors behind the time path of real spending and revenue in the West German states from 1975 to 2004. The empirical approach stresses robustness and takes into account a large set of economic and political variables. Our results suggest that common economic factors and, to a smaller degree, state-specific economic developments are important determinants of state fiscal performance. In comparison, the influence of political factors is limited both in statistical and quantitative terms. Finally, there is evidence that addressing governance problems and ensuring flexibility in terms of fiscal strategy are important ingredients for any policy aimed at improving fiscal outcomes at the state level.

The paper is reviewing the foundation of the “Bankgesellschaft Berlin” in 1994 that consisted in a merger of three publicly owned banking institutes in Berlin. The financial crisis of the banking group in 2001 resulted in one of the biggest public scandals in German banking history. The paper is analyzing the case of the “Bankgesellschaft” in relation to possible interdependencies between its foundation and the financial crisis in 2001. In spite of evidence for inefficiencies in the structure of the “Bankgesellschaft” it cannot be stated that the merger in 1994 directly resulted in the financial crisis of the banking group.

This paper analyzes empirically differences in the size of central bank boards (or monetary policy committees) across countries. We discuss the possible determinants of a board’s size. The empirical relevance of these factors is examined using a new dataset that covers the de jure membership size of 84 central bank boards at the end of 2003. We find that larger and more heterogeneous countries, countries with stronger democratic institutions, countries with floating exchange rate regimes, and independent central banks with more staff tend to have larger boards.

We use Bayesian estimation techniques to investigate whether money growth Granger-causes inflation in the United States. We test for Granger-causality out-of-sample and find, perhaps surprisingly given recent theoretical arguments, that including money growth in simple VAR models of inflation does systematically improve out-of-sample forecasting accuracy. This holds for a long forecasting sample 1960-2005, as well for more recent subperiods, including the Volcker and Greenspan eras. However, the contribution of money to inflation forecasting accuracy is quantitatively limited and tends to be smaller in recent subperiods, in particular in models that also include information on real GDP growth and interest rates.

This paper explores official trade data to identify patterns of smuggling in international trade. Our main measure of interest is the difference in matched partner trade statistics, i.e., the extent to which the recorded export value in the source country deviates from the reported import value in the destination country. Analyzing 4-digit product level data for the world’s five largest importers for the period from 2002-2006, we find that the reporting gaps are highly correlated with the level of corruption in both partner countries. This finding supports the hypothesis that trade gaps partly represent smuggling activities.

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the ability of Fed watchers to forecast US monetary policy decisions. Based on a novel database for 268 professional forecasters since 1999, the average forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5 to 10 basis points between the best and worstperformers across the sample. This heterogeneity is found to be related to both the skills of analysts – such as their educational and employment backgrounds – and to geography. In particular, forecasters located in regions which experience more idiosyncratic economic conditions perform worse in anticipating monetary policy. This evidence is indicative that limited attention and heterogeneous priors are present even for anticipating important events such as monetary policy decisions. Moreover, the paper shows that such heterogeneity is economically important as it leads to greater financial market volatility after FOMC meetings. Finally, policy-makers are not impotent in influencing such heterogeneity as Fed communication is found to affect forecast accuracy significantly.

In the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914), global capital market integration led to substantial net capital movements from rich to poor economies. The historical experience stands in contrast to the contemporary globalization where gross capital mobility is equally high, but did not incite a substantial transfer of savings from rich to poor economies. Using data for the historical and modern periods we extend Lucas’ (1990) original model and show that differences in institutional quality between rich and poor countries can account for the sharply divergent patterns of international capital movements.

How many people should decide about monetary policy? In this paper, we take an empirical perspective on this issue, analyzing the relationship between the number of monetary policy decisionmakers and monetary policy outcomes. Using a new data set that characterizes Monetary Policy Committees (MPCs) in more than 30 countries from 1960 through 2000, we find a U-shaped relation between the membership size of MPCs and inflation; our results suggest that the lowest level of inflation is reached at MPCs with about seven to ten members. Similar results are obtained for other measures, such as inflation variability and output growth. We also find that MPC size influences the success of monetary targeting regimes. In contrast, there is no evidence that either turnover rates of MPC members or the membership composition of MPCs affect economic outcomes.

This paper contributes to the debate on the role of money in monetary policy by analyzing the information content of money in forecasting euro-area inflation. We compare the predictive performance within and among various classes of structural and empirical models in a consistent framework using Bayesian and other estimation techniques. We find that money contains relevant information for inflation in some model classes. Money-based New Keynesian DSGE models and VARs incorporating money perform better than their cashless counterparts. But there are also indications that the contribution of money has its limits. The marginal contribution of money to forecasting accuracy is often small, money adds little to dynamic factor models, and it worsens forecasting accuracy of partial equilibrium models. Finally, non-monetary models dominate monetary models in an all-out horserace.

Global excess liquidity roaming the world’s financial markets (or its sudden absence) is sometimes believed to limit sovereign monetary policy even in large economies such as the euro area. However, there is still discussion about what constitutes global excess liquidity and how exactly it shapes the policy environment. Our approach adjusts liquidity for longerterm interest rate and output effects and focuses on U.S. and Japanese liquidity as relevant proxies for global developments from a euro area perspective. We find that both excess liquidity in Japan and, in particular, the U.S. tend to lead developments in euro area liquidity. U.S. excess liquidity also enters consistently positive as a determinant of euro area inflation and is shown to be Granger-causal for euro area inflation in an out-of-sample forecasting exercise. In part, this result seems to be related to a weakening of the euro area interest rate channel during times of excessive U.S. liquidity. In contrast, the influence of Japanese and euro area excess liquidity on euro area inflation is more limited.

In this note, we use multivariate models estimated with Bayesian techniques and an out-ofsample approach to investigate whether money growth Granger- causes output growth in the United States. We find surprisingly strong evidence for a money-output link over the 1960-2005 period. However, further analysis indicates that this result is likely to be misleading; after the ‘Great moderation’, the Granger-causal role of money appears to have vanished completely.

From a normative perspective, it is striking that the degree of central bank independence (CBI) varies considerably across countries. Taking a political economy perspective, this paper demonstrates how different degrees of CBI may be the result of ‘strategic policy-making’. While an independent central bank reduces the incumbent politician’s chances to influence current monetary policy it also raises the costs of future policy changes for political successors. Hence, when deciding on the degree of CBI, incumbent politicians face a trade-off: current influence on monetary policy versus policy durability. This paper shows how various factors change this trade-off and hence the institutional choice. The model predicts that the level of CBI incumbent politicians choose will increase in politicians’ ability to screen central bankers’ preferences, in the degree of political polarization, and in the weight politicians place on future policy outcomes. In contrast, the likelihood for the implementation of an independent central bank decreases in the re-election prospects of incumbents and in the utility central bankers receive from holding office.