Documents Ciccarelli, Matteo 6 results

"The eurozone economic activity and banking sector have shown substantial fragility over the last years with remarkable country heterogeneity. Using detailed data on lending conditions and standards, we analyse – along several key dimensions of heterogeneity – how financial fragility has affected the transmission mechanism of the single eurozone monetary policy. The analysis shows that the monetary transmission mechanism is time-varying and influenced by the financial fragility of the sovereigns, banks, firms and households. The impact of monetary policy on aggregate output is stronger during the financial crisis, especially in countries facing increased sovereign financial distress. This amplification mechanism, moreover, operates through the credit channel, both the bank lending and the non-financial borrower balance-sheet channels. Our results suggest that the bank-lending channel has been to a large extent neutralized by the ECB non-standard monetary policy interventions, but the policy framework until the end of 2011 was insufficient to overcome credit availability problems stemming from deteriorated firm net worth and risk conditions, especially for small firms in countries under stress."

"This paper explores the role that the imperfect knowledge of the structure of the economy plays in the uncertainty surrounding the effects of rule-based monetary policy on unemployment dynamics in the euro area and the US. We employ a Bayesian model averaging procedure on a wide range of models which differ in several dimensions to account for the uncertainty that the policymaker faces when setting the monetary policy and evaluating its effect on real economy. We find evidence of a high degree of dispersion across models in both policy rule parameters and impulse response functions. Moreover, monetary policy shocks have very similar recessionary effects on the two economies with a different role played by the participation rate in the transmission mechanism. Finally, we show that a policy maker who does not take model uncertainty into account and selects the results on the basis of a single model may come to misleading conclusions not only about the transmission mechanism, but also about the differences between the euro area and the US, which are on average essentially small."

"The macroeconomic effects of climate-related events and climate policies depend on the interaction between demand- and supply-type of shocks that those events and policies imply. Using a panel of 24 OECD countries for the sample 1990-2019 and a standard macroeconomic framework, the paper tests the combined effect of (1) climate change, (2) environmental policies and (3) environment-related technologies on the macroeconomy. Results show that climate change and policies to counteract them have a significant, albeit not sizeable, macroeconomic effects over the business cycle. We find evidence that physical risks work as negative demand shocks while transition policies or technology improvements resemble downward supply movements. Furthermore, the disruptive effects on the economy are exacerbated for countries without carbon tax or with a high exposure to natural disasters. Overall our results support the need for a uniform policy mix to counteract climate change with a balance between demand-pull and technology-push policies."

"This paper applies the semi-structural model proposed by Bernanke and Blanchard (2023) to analyse wage growth, price inflation and inflation expectations in the euro area. It is part of a broader project coordinated by Bernanke and Blanchard to provide a unified framework for analysing and comparing global inflation dynamics across the major world economic areas, including US, euro area, Canada, UK, and Japan. The paper makes four main contributions. First, it estimates the model using quarterly data from the euro area covering the period from the first quarter of 1999 to the second quarter of 2023. Second, it conducts an empirical assessment of how euro area price inflation responds to various exogenous shocks. This includes evaluating how shock transmission evolved during the pandemic and comparing it with experience in the United States. Third, the model decomposes the drivers of wage growth and price inflation in the post-pandemic period. It emphasises the transmission channels and the respective roles of supply and demand forces that have contributed to the recent inflationary surge. Notably, it identifies the impact of labour market tightness, productivity, global supply chain disruptions and energy and food price shocks. Finally, the model generates conditional projections based on these exogenous shocks, enabling a more robust cross-check of inflation forecasts during times of significant global economic disturbances."