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Monetary Policy, Agency Costs and Output Dynamics

This paper examines the role of financial market imperfections for output reactions to nominal interest rate shocks. Empirical evidence shows a hump-shaped impulse response function of output and suggests that credit supply co-moves with output. A monetary business cycle model with staggered price setting is presented where the firms' outlays for capital and labor must be covered by the sum of net worth of entrepreneurs and loans in the form of debt contracts. These properties are shown to generate a hump-shaped impulse response of output, which takes on the smooth and persistent appearance of the empirical output response when nominal wages are set in a staggered way, too.     

Constructing Historical Euro-zone Data

Existing methods of reconstructing historical Euro-zone data by aggregation of the individual countries' aggregate data raises numerous difficulties, especially due to past exchange rate changes. The approach proposed here is designed to avoid such distortions, and aggregate exactly when exchange rates are fixed. We first compute growth rates within states, aggregate these, then cumulate this Euro-zone growth rate to obtain the aggregated levels variables. The aggregate of the implicit-deflator price index coincides with the implicit deflator of our aggregate nominal and real data. We apply the method to Euro-zone M3, GDP and prices over the previous two decades.     

On the design of optimal grandfathering schemes for emission allowances

This paper derives optimal schemes for the free allocation of emission allowances in a dynamic context. We consider emissions- and output-based allocation rules which allow for updating of the basis of allocation over time and thereby do not rely on historical data only. We show that such dynamic schemes do not necessarily induce inefficient outcomes. In closed trading systems with an absolute cap on emissions, grandfathering schemes which allocate allowances proportionally to past emissions are first-best. However, in open trading systems where allowances can be traded with outsiders, first-best allocation schemes must not depend on firm-specific decisions while second-best schemes correspond to a Ramsey rule of optimal tax differentiation and are generally based on both past emission and output levels.