NBER Publications by Benoît Mojon

This paper characterizes the transmission mechanism of monetary shocks across countries of the euro area, documents how this mechanism has changed with the introduction of the euro, and explores some potential explanations. The factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) framework used is sufficiently rich to jointly model the euro area dynamics while permitting the transmission of shocks to be different across countries. We find important heterogeneity across countries in the effect of monetary shocks before the launch of the euro. In particular, we find that German interest-rate shocks triggered stronger responses of interest rates and consumption in some countries such as Italy and Spain than in Germany itself. According to our estimates, the creation of the euro has contributed 1) to a greater homoge...

We revisit recent evidence on how monetary policy affects output and prices in the U.S. and in the euro area. The response patterns to a shift in monetary policy are similar in most respects, but differ noticeably as to the composition of output changes. In the euro area investment is the predominant driver of output changes, while in the U.S. consumption shifts are significantly more important. We dub this difference the output composition puzzle and explore its implications and several potential explanations for it. While the evidence seems to point at differences in consumption responses, rather than investment, as the proximate cause for this fact, the source of the consumption difference remains a puzzle.

Drawing on recent Eurosystem research that uses a range of econometric techniques and a number of new data sets, we propose a comprehensive description of how monetary policy affects the euro area economy. We focus mainly on three questions: (1) what are the stylized facts concerning the transmission of monetary policy for the area as a whole and for individual countries? (2) can the classic' interest rate channel (IRC) alone, without capital market imperfections, explain these facts? (3) if not, is the bank lending channel a likely candidate to complete the story? We find plausible euro-area wide monetary policy responses for prices and output that are similar to those generally reported for the U.S. However, investment (relative to consumption) seems to play a larger role in euro area m...