On the Importance of Sectoral and Regional Shocks for Price‐Setting

We use novel disaggregate sectoral‐regional euro‐area data to investigate the sources of price changes, introducing a new method to extract factors from overlapping data blocks that allows for estimation of aggregate, sectoral, country‐specific and regional components of price changes. Our sectoral component explains much less variation in disaggregate inflation rates and exhibits much less volatility and more persistence than previous findings for the US indicate. Country‐ and region‐specific factors play an important role, emphasizing heterogeneity of inflation dynamics along both sectoral and geographical dimensions. Our results are incompatible with basic sticky‐information or Calvo‐type price‐setting models, but require multi‐sector, multi‐country models. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comovements and heterogeneity in the euro area analyzed in a non‐stationary dynamic factor model

This paper establishes stylized facts on comovements and heterogeneity of individual euro area countries' output and price developments in the past two decades. For this purpose, a non‐stationary structural dynamic factor model is fitted to a large dataset of euro area macroeconomic variables. The main results are as follows. Both common factors and idiosyncratic components are important in explaining individual countries' output and price developments in the euro area and are also both very persistent. Idiosyncratic shocks and adjustments to these shocks are mainly responsible for cross‐country heterogeneity. The asymmetric transmission of common shocks plays a minor role. Finally, there is no strong evidence that some common shocks lead to greater heterogeneity than others. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the international linkages of the euro area: a global VAR analysis

This paper presents a quarterly global model combining individual country vector error‐correcting models in which the domestic variables are related to the country‐specific foreign variables. The global VAR (GVAR) model is estimated for 26 countries, the euro area being treated as a single economy, over the period 1979–2003. It advances research in this area in a number of directions. In particular, it provides a theoretical framework where the GVAR is derived as an approximation to a global unobserved common factor model. Using average pair‐wise cross‐section error correlations, the GVAR approach is shown to be quite effective in dealing with the common factor interdependencies and international co‐movements of business cycles. It develops a sieve bootstrap procedure for simulation of the GVAR as a whole, which is then used in testing the structural stability of the parameters, and for establishing bootstrap confidence bounds for the impulse responses. Finally, in addition to generalized impulse responses, the current paper considers the use of the GVAR for ‘structural’ impulse response analysis with focus on external shocks for the euro area economy, particularly in response to shocks to the US. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

COMPETITIVENESS WITHIN THE EURO AREA: THE PROBLEM THAT STILL NEEDS TO BE SOLVED

Unsustainable public debt, low competitiveness and high current account deficits are major problems for the so‐called PIIGS countries. These countries experienced consumer price and wage inflation above the euro area average in the first decade of the euro, basically fuelled by buoyant capital inflows. The resulting real appreciation against low‐inflation countries led to a deterioration in their competitiveness, but rigid labour markets now prevent a quick market‐based readjustment of real wages to the changed situation. Thus, both public expenditure cuts and structural labour market reforms are urgent to reduce the likelihood of a euro area break‐up.     

Responses to monetary policy shocks in the east and the west of Europe: a comparison

This paper compares impulse responses to monetary policy shocks in the euro area countries before the EMU and in the New Member States (NMS) from central–eastern Europe. We mitigate the small‐sample problem, which is especially acute for the NMS, by using a Bayesian estimation that combines information across countries. The impulse responses in the NMS are broadly similar to those in the euro area countries. There is some evidence that in the NMS, which have had higher and more volatile inflation, the Phillips curve is steeper than in the euro area countries. This finding is consistent with economic theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The (de-)anchoring of inflation expectations: New evidence from the euro area

Well-anchored inflation expectations are a key factor for achieving economic stability. This paper provides new empirical results on the anchoring of long-term inflation expectations in the euro area. In line with earlier evidence, we find that euro area inflation expectations have been anchored until fall 2011. Since then, however, they respond significantly to macroeconomic news. Our results obtained from multiple endogenous break point tests suggest that euro area inflation expectations have remained de-anchored ever since.     

Econometric Evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve*

We give an appraisal of the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NPCM) as an empirical model of European inflation. The favourable evidence for NPCMs on euro‐area data reported in earlier studies is shown to depend on specific choices made about estimation methodology. The NPCM can be re‐interpreted as a highly restricted equilibrium correction model. We also report the outcome of tests based on variable addition and encompassing of existing models. The results show that economists should not accept the NPCM too readily.     

Forecasting Euro‐Area Macroeconomic Variables Using a Factor Model Approach for Backdating

We suggest to use a factor model based backdating procedure to construct historical Euro‐area macroeconomic time series data for the pre‐Euro period. We argue that this is a useful alternative to standard contemporaneous aggregation methods. The article investigates for a number of Euro‐area variables whether forecasts based on the factor‐backdated data are more precise than those obtained with standard area‐wide data. A recursive pseudo‐out‐of‐sample forecasting experiment using quarterly data is conducted. Our results suggest that some key variables (e.g. real GDP, inflation and long‐term interest rate) can indeed be forecasted more precisely with the factor‐backdated data.     

Mind the Output Gap: The Disconnect of Growth and Inflation during Recessions and Convex Phillips Curves in the Euro Area

We develop a theoretical model that features a business cycle‐dependent relation between output, price inflation and inflation expectations, augmenting the model by Svensson (1997) with a nonlinear Phillips curve that reflects the rationale underlying the capacity constraint theory (Macklem, 1997). The theoretical model motivates our empirical assessment, based on a regime‐switching Phillips curve and a regime‐switching monetary structural VAR, employing different filter‐based, semi‐structural model‐based and Bayesian factor model‐implied output gaps. The analysis confirms the presence of a convex relationship between inflation and the output gap, meaning that the coefficient in the Phillips curve on the output gap recurringly increases during times of expansion and abates during recessions. Sign‐restricted monetary policy shocks based on a regime‐switching monetary SVAR reveal that expansionary monetary policy induces less pressure on inflation at times of weak as opposed to strong growth; thereby rationalizing relatively stronger expansionary policy, including unconventional volume‐based policy, during times of deep recession. A further augmented model shows that an effective euro exchange rate shock, too, implies business cycle state‐dependent responses, with more upward pressure on prices arising from unexpected currency depreciation at times of expansion than during recession phases.     

Money Growth and Inflation in the Euro Area: A Time‐Frequency View

This article provides new insights on the relationship between money growth and inflation in the euro area over the last 40 years. This highly relevant link for the European Central Bank monetary policy strategy is assessed using wavelet analysis. The findings indicate a stronger link between inflation and money growth at low frequencies over the whole sample period. At the typical business cycle frequency range the link is only present until the beginning of the 1980s. Moreover, there seems to be a recent deterioration of the leading properties of money growth with respect to inflation in the euro area.     

Hungary's entry into the euro area: Lessons for prospective members from a monetary policy perspective

This paper evaluates the conduct of monetary policy in Hungary using standard Taylor rules as well as extended rules that incorporate real exchange rate effects. Moreover, we explicitly consider the impact of future euro area entry by estimating instrument rules that permit an influence from Maastricht Treaty inflation requirements via the estimation of Markov switching models as well as by estimating a differential rule vis-à-vis the existing euro area. Lastly, the paper also considers the impact on policy rules from the large data revision that affects real exchange rate and output estimates. I find that interest rate setting behavior in Hungary does not resemble that of the euro area. Also, counterfactual experiments reveal that the potential macroeconomic costs of entry into the euro area sooner rather than later may be lower than if membership in the single currency area is delayed beyond 2008.     

Misspecification and Expectations Correction in New Keynesian DSGE Models

This paper focuses on the dynamic misspecification that characterizes the class of small‐scale New Keynesian models currently used in monetary and business cycle analysis, and provides a remedy for the typical difficulties these models have in accounting for the rich contemporaneous and dynamic correlation structure of the data. We suggest using a statistical model for the data as a device through which it is possible to adapt the econometric specification of the New Keynesian model such that the risk of omitting important propagation mechanisms is kept under control. A pseudo‐structural form is built from the baseline system of Euler equations by forcing the state vector of the system to have the same dimension as the state vector characterizing the statistical model. The pseudo‐structural form gives rise to a set of cross‐equation restrictions that do not penalize the autocorrelation structure and persistence of the data. Standard estimation and evaluation methods can be used. We provide an empirical illustration based on USA quarterly data and a small‐scale monetary New Keynesian model.     

Measurement Bias in the HICP: What do we know and What do we need to know?

Abstract. The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the primary measure of inflation in the euro area, and plays a central role in the policy deliberations of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB defines its Treaty mandate of price stability as '… a year‐on‐year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%[…] to be maintained over the medium term.' Among the rationales given for defining price stability as prevailing at some positive measured inflation rate is the possibility that the HICP as published incorporates measurement errors of one sort or another that may cause it to systematically overstate the true rate of inflation in the euro area. This paper reviews what currently is known about the scope of measurement error in the HICP. We conclude that given the vague conceptual framework of the HICP, the scant research on price measurement issues in the EU and the ongoing improvements in the HICP, there is very little scientific basis at this time for a point (or even an interval) estimate of a positive bias in the HICP.     

The Euro Effect on Trade is not as Large as Commonly Thought*

Existing studies on the impact of the euro on goods trade report increments between 5% and 40%. These estimates are based on standard panel gravity models for the level of trade. We show that the residuals from these models exhibit upward trends over time for the euro countries, and that this leads to an upward bias in the estimated euro effect. To correct for that, we extend the standard model by including a time trend that may have different effects across country‐pairs. This results in an estimated euro impact of only 3%.     

Euro area real-time density forecasting with financial or labor market frictions

We compare real-time density forecasts for the euro area using three DSGE models. The benchmark is the Smets and Wouters model, and its forecasts of real GDP growth and inflation are compared with those from two extensions. The first adds financial frictions and expands the observables to include a measure of the external finance premium. The second allows for the extensive labor-market margin and adds the unemployment rate to the observables. The main question that we address is whether these extensions improve the density forecasts of real GDP and inflation and their joint forecasts up to an eight-quarter horizon. We find that adding financial frictions leads to a deterioration in the forecasts, with the exception of longer-term inflation forecasts and the period around the Great Recession. The labor market extension improves the medium- to longer-term real GDP growth and shorter- to medium-term inflation forecasts weakly compared with the benchmark model.     

Does trade integration alter monetary policy transmission?

This paper explores the role of trade integration—or openness—for monetary policy transmission in a medium-scale new Keynesian model. Allowing for strategic complementarities in price setting, we highlight a new dimension of the exchange rate channel by which monetary policy directly impacts domestic inflation: a monetary contraction which appreciates the exchange rate lowers the local currency price of imported goods; this, in turn, induces domestic producers to lower their prices too. We pin down key parameters of the model by matching impulse responses obtained from a vector autoregression on time series for the US relative to the euro area. Our estimation procedure yields plausible parameter values and suggests a strong role for strategic complementarities. Counterfactual simulations show that openness alters monetary transmission significantly. While the contractionary effect of a monetary policy shock on inflation and output tends to increase in openness, we find that monetary policy's control over inflation increases, as the output decline which is necessary to bring about a given reduction of inflation is smaller in more open economies.     

Growth Empirics in Panel Data Under Model Uncertainty and Weak Exogeneity

This paper considers panel growth regressions in the presence of model uncertainty and reverse causality concerns. For this purpose, my econometric framework combines Bayesian model averaging with a suitable likelihood function for dynamic panel models with weakly exogenous regressors and fixed effects. An application of this econometric methodology to a panel of countries over the 1960–2000 period highlights the difficulties in identifying the sources of economic growth by means of cross‐country regressions. In particular, none of the nine candidate regressors considered can be labeled as a robust determinant of economic growth. Moreover, the estimated rate of conditional convergence is indistinguishable from zero. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Macroeconomic forecasting and structural change

The aim of this paper is to assess whether modeling structural change can help improving the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts. We conduct a simulated real‐time out‐of‐sample exercise using a time‐varying coefficients vector autoregression (VAR) with stochastic volatility to predict the inflation rate, unemployment rate and interest rate in the USA. The model generates accurate predictions for the three variables. In particular, the forecasts of inflation are much more accurate than those obtained with any other competing model, including fixed coefficients VARs, time‐varying autoregressions and the naïve random walk model. The results hold true also after the mid 1980s, a period in which forecasting inflation was particularly hard. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation‐based tests of forward‐looking models under VAR learning dynamics

In this paper we propose a simulation‐based technique to investigate the finite sample performance of likelihood ratio (LR) tests for the nonlinear restrictions that arise when a class of forward‐looking (FL) models typically used in monetary policy analysis is evaluated with vector autoregressive (VAR) models. We consider ‘one‐shot’ tests to evaluate the FL model under the rational expectations hypothesis and sequences of tests obtained under the adaptive learning hypothesis. The analysis is based on a comparison between the unrestricted and restricted VAR likelihoods, and the p‐values associated with the LR test statistics are computed by Monte Carlo simulation. We also address the case where the variables of the FL model can be approximated as non‐stationary cointegrated processes. Application to the ‘hybrid’ New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) in the euro area shows that (i) the forward‐looking component of inflation dynamics is much larger than the backward‐looking component and (ii) the sequence of restrictions implied by the cointegrated NKPC under learning dynamics is not rejected over the monitoring period 1984–2005. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The COVID-19 shock and challenges for inflation modelling

We document the impact of COVID-19 on inflation modelling within a vector autoregression (VAR) model and provide guidance for forecasting euro area inflation during the pandemic. We show that estimated parameters are strongly affected, leading to different and sometimes implausible projections. As a solution, we propose to augment the VAR by allowing the residuals to have a fat-tailed distribution instead of a Gaussian one. This also outperforms with respect to unconditional forecasts. Yet, what brings sizeable forecast gains during the pandemic is adding meaningful off-model information, such as that entailed in the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The fat-tailed VAR loses part, but not all of its relative advantage compared to the Gaussian version when producing conditional inflation forecasts in a real-time setup. It is the joint fat-tailed errors and multi-equation modelling that manage to robustify models against extreme observations; in a single-equation model the same solution is less effective.