Since its creation the euro area suffered from imbalances between its core and peripheral members. This paper checks whether macroprudential policy applied to the peripheral countries could contribute to providing more macroeconomic stability in this region. To this end we build a two-economy macrofinancial DSGE model and simulate the effects of macroprudential policies under the assumption of asymmetric shocks hitting the core and the periphery. We find that macroprudential policy is able to partly make up for the loss of independent monetary policy in the periphery. Moreover, LTV policy seems more efficient than regulating capital adequacy ratios. However, for the policies to be effective, they must be decentralized. Area-wide policy is almost ineffective in this respect. JEL: E32, E44, E58

a b s t r a c tWe compare two standard extensions to the New Keynesian framework that feature financial frictions. The first model, originating from Kiyotaki and Moore (1997), is based on collateral constraints. The second, developed by Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) and Bernanke et al. (1999), accentuates the role of external finance premia. We tweak the models and calibrate them in a way that allows for both qualitative and quantitative comparisons. Next, we thoroughly analyze the two variants using moment matching, impulse response analysis and business cycle accounting. Overall, we find that the business cycle properties of the external finance premium framework are more in line with empirical evidence. In particular, the collateral constraint model fails to produce hump-shaped impulse responses and generates volatilities of the price of capital and rate of return on capital that are inconsistent with the data by a large margin.

Country risk premia can substantially affect macroeconomic dynamics. We concentrate on one of their most important determinants—a country’s net foreign asset (NFA) position and—in contrast to the existing research—investigate its nonlinear link to risk premia. The importance of this particular nonlinearity is two-fold. First, it allows to identify the NFA level above which the elasticity becomes much (possibly dangerously) higher. Second, such a nonlinear relationship is a standard ingredient of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, but its proper calibration/estimation is missing. Our estimation shows that indeed the link is highly nonlinear and helps to identify the NFA position where the nonlinearity kicks in at approximately −70% to −75% of GDP. We also provide a proper calibration of the risk premium—NFA relationship which can be used in DSGE models and demonstrate that its slope matters significantly for economic dynamics in such a model.

We construct an open-economy DSGE model with a banking sector to analyse the impact of the recent credit crunch on a small open economy. In our model the banking sector operates under monopolistic competition, collects deposits and grants collateralized loans. Collateral effects amplify monetary policy actions, interest rate stickiness dampens the transmission of interest rates, and financial shocks generate non-negligible real and nominal effects. As an application we estimate the model for Poland -a typical small open economy. According to the results, financial shocks had a substantial, though not overwhelming, impact on the Polish economy during the 2008/09 crisis, lowering GDP by a little over one percent. JEL: E32, E44, E52