Stefan Laséen

Since the Global Financial Crisis, non-reserve-issuing economies (NREs) have been highly sensitive to episodes of external pressures. With monetary policy independence constrained by this sensitivity, many NREs have utilized other policy instruments. This paper confirms the vulnerability of NREs to external shocks and finds that, in some circumstan...

Since the global financial crisis, non-reserve-issuing economies (NREs) have been highly sensitive to episodes of external pressures. With monetary policy independence constrained by this sensitivity, many NREs have utilized other policy instruments. This paper confirms the vulnerability of NREs to external shocks and finds that in some circumstanc...

IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. 2 Abstract Since the global financial crisis, non-reserve-...

Should monetary policy use its short‐term policy rate to stabilize the growth in household credit and housing prices with the aim of promoting financial stability? We ask this question for the case of Canada. We find that, to a first approximation, the answer is no. Résumé Stabilité financière et politique de taux d’intérêt: évaluation quantitativ...

In this paper, we study identification and misspecification problems in standard closed and open-economy empirical New-Keynesian DSGE models used in monetary policy analysis. We find that problems with model misspecification still appear to be a first-order issue in monetary DSGE models, and argue that it is problems with model misspecification tha...

Inflation dynamics, as well as its interaction with unemployment, have been puzzling since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In this empirical paper, we use multivariate, possibly time-varying, time-series models and show that changes in shocks are a more salient feature of the data than changes in coefficients. Hence, the GFC did not break the Ph...

We evaluate forecasts made in real time to support monetary policy decisions at Sveriges Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden) from 2007 to 2013. We compare forecasts made with a DSGE model and a BVAR model with judgemental forecasts published by the Riksbank, and we evaluate the usefulness of conditioning information for the model-based forecasts....

Should monetary policy use its short-term policy rate to stabilize the growth in household credit and housing prices with the aim of promoting financial stability? We ask this question for the case of Canada. We find that to a first approximation, the answer is no— especially when the economy is slowing down.

The Global Financial Crisis has reopened discussions on the role of the monetary policy in preserving financial stability. Determining whether monetary policy affects financial variables domestically—especially compared to the effects of macroprudential policies— and across borders, is crucial in this context. This paper looks into these issues...

This paper specifies a new convenient algorithm to construct policy projections conditional on alternative anticipated policy rate paths in linearized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, such as Ramses, the Riksbank’s main DSGE model. Such projections with anticipated policy rate paths correspond to situations where the central ba...

We show how to construct optimal policy projections in Ramses, the Riksbank's open-economy medium-sized DSGE model for forecasting and policy analysis. Bayesian estimation of the parameters of the model indicates that they are relatively invariant to alternative policy assumptions and supports our view that the model parameters may be regarded as u...

The aim of the paper is to check the influence of the degree of forward-lookingness of economic agents on the optimal monetary policy rules, using several versions of a small, highly aggregated structural model describing the transmission mechanism in the spirit of the New Keynesian School. We show the optimal policy rule with the monetary authorit...

We show how to construct optimal policy projections in Ramses, the Riksbank’s openeconomy medium-sized DSGE model for forecasting and policy analysis. Bayesian estimation of the parameters of the model indicates that they are relatively invariant to alternative policy assumptions and supports that the model may be regarded as structural in a stable...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

Monetary policies of the ECB and US Fed can be characterised by Taylor rules, that is both central banks seem to be setting rates by taking into account the output gap and inflation. We also set up and tested Taylor rules which incorporate money growth and the euro-dollar exchange rate, thereby improving the fit between actual and Taylor rule based...

This paper estimates and tests a new Keynesian small open economy model in the tradition of Christiano et al. [2005. Nominal rigidities and the dynamic effects of a shock to monetary policy. Journal of Political Economy 113(1), 1–45] and Smets and Wouters [2003. An estimated stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model of the Euro area. Journal of...

In this paper, we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for an open economy, and estimate it on Euro area data using Bayesian estimation techniques. The model incorporates several open economy features, as well as a number of nominal and real frictions that have proven to be important for the empirical fit of closed economy...

This paper uses an estimated open economy DSGE model to examine if constant interest forecasts one and two years ahead can be regarded as modest policy interventions during the period 1993Q4-2002Q4. An intervention is here defined to be modest if it does not trigger the agents to revise their expectations about the inflation targeting policy. Using...

In this paper we use a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model for an open economy to examine the role of sticky prices in explaining the joint behaviour of inflation and a fairly large set of macroeconomic variables. We find that price stickiness is an important feature for firms active in the domestic, export and import sectors, even...

This paper uses an estimated open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the euro area to examine if during 1993Q4-2002Q4 constant interest rate forecasts (CIRFs), commonly used by inflation-targeting central banks, are viewed as being in line with the central bank's historical policy behaviour. In the sense of Leeper and Zha (200...

We study the capital adjustment process in Swedish manufacturing Firms and relate the findings to standard models of capital adjustment. We have three findings. ("i") The capital accumulation process is highly volatile and non-persistent. ("ii") An "S", "s" model fits the data well in some, but not all, dimensions. Also, a model with irreversible c...

How does central bank conservatism affect labor market regulation? In this paper, we examine the economic forces at work. An increase in conservatism triggers two opposite effects. It reduces the inflation bias of discretionary monetary policy and hence the cost of regulation. It also increases unemployment variability, making regulation more costl...

Monetary policies of the ECB and US Fed can be characterised by Taylor rules, that is both central banks seem to be setting rates by taking into account the output gap and inflation. We also set up and tested Taylor rules which incorporate money growth and the euro-dollar exchange rate, thereby improving the fit between actual and Taylor rule based...

We introduce adaptive learning behavior into a general-equilibrium life-cycle economy with capital accumulation. Agents form forecasts of the rate of return to capital assets using least-squares autoregressions on past data. We show that, in contrast to the perfect-foresight dynamics, the dynamical system under learning possesses equilibria that ar...

The effects of firm-specific shocks on the gain from writing state-contingent wage contracts are examine in an extension of the model in Gottfries (1992). It is shown that the introduction of firm-specific uncertainty increases the gain from indexation to prices only moderately. Moreover, nominal wage contracts should be more prevalent when unemplo...

In this paper we study the capital adjustment process in Swedish manufacturing firms and relate the empirical findings to standard models of firm behavior in the presence of impediments to capital adjustments.

In this paper I investigate to what extent firm-specific uncertainty affects the gain from indexation. Earlier studies have tried to explain wage rigidity by arguing that insiders face little layoff risk due to employment fluctuations caused by aggregate shocks. However, this analysis abstracts from idiosyncratic risk and this seems hard to reconci...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Uppsala University, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-131).