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We evaluate the income distributional effect of monetary policy in the UK for the period 1993–2019 using a mixed frequency approach and a high-frequency identification. Our results indicate that ex...

Under the prospect of productive specialization, the degree of potential success of the euro since its inception was seen as closely linked to the development of effective risk-sharing mechanisms across EU members. Without shared fiscal resources, financial integration was expected to play a leading role in this respect. This paper documents the failure in fulfilling this expectation: Along with an analysis of the evolution of specialization and risk-sharing, we present evidence supporting the claim that progress in financial integration has not been conducive to income risk-sharing across euro area members, while it might have favoured a specialization split between countries with low-medium and high technology productive structures. As a result, monetary union members face higher income fluctuation risk without enhanced insurance protection. Additionally, evidence suggests a differential impact of the specialization split on sector productivity, contributing to making the monetary union a club of non equals.

This paper evaluates the distributive effect of monetary policy in the case of the UK. The income inequality measure represents the whole income distribution. Different income inequality data sources and sample periods are considered. The monetary policy shock is identified by using recursive, sign restrictions, and high frequency methods. The results indicate that contractionary monetary policy decreases income inequality. This effect is also explored through the different distribution channels of monetary policy. In this respect, our results suggest that the stronger negative effect of contractionary monetary policy on business and financial income than on labor earnings leads to the overall reduction of income inequality. This evaluation of the distributive impact of monetary policy can be useful for the development of macroeconomic policies designed to reduce income inequality.

This paper describes the BBVA-ARIES, a Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) for the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In addition to providing EMU-wide growth and inflation forecasts, the model provides an assessment of the interactions between key EMU macroeconomic variables and external ones, such as world GDP or commodity prices. A comparison of the forecasts generated by the model and those of private analysts and public institutions reveals a very positive balance in favour of the model. For their part, the simulations allow us to assess the potential macroeconomic effects of macroeconomic developments in the EMU. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There has been extensive empirical research on the role of credit markets in the transmission of US monetary policy, but the evidence for other countries is scarce. This paper compares the US experience with a set of 13 European countries by examining monetary VARsincluding banks’ balance sheets in the spirit of Bernanke and Blinder (1992). Itis shownthat the VAR methodology provides plausible results forinterpretinginterest rateshocks as monetary policy shocks inmost countries. The evolution of bank lending after a monetary contraction is then analysed. For most countries, it is shown that bank loans decline more than money in the medium run. In the short run, however, loans are sticky and react less than money. Also, loans and output responses to an increase in interest rate tend to be more synchronized than those of money and output. This evidence is similar to the US and is consistent with the broad credit channel of monetary policy.

Under the prospects of productive specialization, the degree of success of the euro was seen since inception as closely linked to the development of effective risk-sharing mechanisms across union members. Without shared fiscal resources, financial integration was expected to play a leading role in this respect. This paper documents the failure in the task of fulfilling this expectation: Along with an analysis of the evolution of specialization and risk-sharing, we present evidence supporting the claim that progress in financial integration has not been conductive for income risk-sharing across euro members, while it has favored a specialization split between countries with low-medium and high technology productive structures. As a result, monetary union members face higher income fluctuation risk without enhanced insurance protection. Additionally, evidence suggests that the specialization split has had differential impacts on sector productivity, affecting negatively to euro members specializing in low-medium technologies, and so helping to make the monetary union a club of less equals.

This brief provides a short guiding tour to the Euro zone crisis. It looks at the current situation, the context in which the zone has to deal with such a situation, the way we got here, and the possible way out. The latter outlines a set of minimum steps required to make the euro sustainable.

We adopt a disequilibrium approach to specify and estimate a structural model for the Spanish economy centred around the labour and production sectors. Our results suggest that the predominant regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s were repressed inflation and capital constraints; it was a period with record growth rates and low unemployment. Demand constraints appear in the late 1970s and become dominant in the early 1980s. Capital constraints again become binding from 1986 on, a period of extraordinary recovery and lowering of unemployment. An estimated measure of structural unemployment suggests that more than a third of Spanish jobless are in this category.

This work presents a processing subsystem for an air- coupled concave array NDT system, which uses Lamb waves. This processing system is able to equalize, delay and add the signals provided by a circular concave array used to receive Lamb waves in laminate materials, such as paper. A Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is used in order to achieve shorter processing times and more flexibility than with DSP systems. The used array has circular concave shape and hence the delays used to get a plain wavefront are not lineal, thus a table with the delay values must be stored inside the FPGA. The Non-Destructive Testing is a growing field of interest for those industries where the high value of the developed components implies the need of a better quality control. In most of these cases the materials cannot be destroyed or altered, therefore a Non Destructive Test is needed. Ultrasonic testing is widely used to test a great variety of materials, but ultrasonic waves need a couplant to get a good transmission coefficient between the inspected material and the ultrasonic transducer. When air is used as couplant, new problems appear, like the higher attenuation that ultrasound suffers in this element. However, the greatest problem is the huge acoustic impedance mismatch that exists between air and the transducers. This mismatch, which is 40(PZT) to 0.006(Air), impedes a good transmission of the energy from the transducer to the inspected material. To improve the bad transmission coefficient, matching layers are included in the transducer (1) and improvements in the system's dynamic range are achieved (2). Lamb waves (3) are also widely used to inspect laminate materials. The main benefit which Lamb waves contribute in is the ability to inspect great portions of material in a short time, making them ideal for inspections where a great area has to be inspected. Moreover, the usefulness of Lamb waves in industrial applications where paper is tested has been demonstrated (4), (5). The usual way to produce a Lamb wave in a plate is to impact a plain wavefront with a certain angle respect to this plate. Lamb wave ultrasonic techniques are mostly based on the application of single element ultrasonic transducer with specific configurations, where the single element is specifically oriented to excite specific Lamb wave modes, see (6). The angular range where Lamb waves can be excited is very narrow in air (7), therefore a system that provides high angular resolution is needed. An array system would be a good solution to obtain this high angular resolution. It also has two main advantages, a transducer array will allow accurate beam steering, and the signal - to - noise ratio will improve. Furthermore, the array has a circular concave shape, so that it raises the angular steering margin of the array. The array used in this paper and its characteristics are deeply described in (8).

We use a policy rule framework and focus on the response of the primary surplus to accumulated public debt to test a sufficient condition for sustainability. The evidence we report suggests that sustainability was prevalent in many EU countries before Maastricht, but also that the Maastricht impulse induced the shift towards sustainability in some of them. Additionally, although a clear distinction emerges in terms of the visibility of the Maastricht stress between the euro bloc, on the one hand, and the non-euro EU countries, the US and Japan, on the other, there is no evidence of bloc differences in terms of the long term soundness of public finances. On the basis of our analysis and results, we highlight the potential policy relevance of the reaction of the primary surplus to accumulated debt in the debate on the proper balance between fiscal stabilization and discipline in EMU.

En este articulo se describe el BBVA-ARIES, un modelo macroeconomico VAR Bayesiano construido para la economia de la Union Economica y Monetaria (UEM). El modelo, ademas de ofrecer previsiones de crecimiento e inflacion para el conjunto de la UEM, se utiliza para hacer ejercicios de simulacion que permiten analizar las interrelaciones existentes entre las principales variables macroeconomicas de la UEM y otras variables externas, como el PIB mundial o los precios de las materias primas. La comparacion de las previsiones derivadas del modelo con otras realizadas por analistas privados e instituciones publicas arroja un balance muy positivo a favor del modelo. Por su parte, las simulaciones realizadas permiten proyectar los posibles efectos macroeconomicos de diversos acontecimientos acaecidos durante el primer ano de existencia de la UEM.