http://hdl.handle.net/10900/95156 Tue, 12 May 2026 12:07:02 GMT 2026-05-12T12:07:02Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138652 Big News: Climate Change and the Business Cycle Dietrich, Alexander M.; Müller, Gernot J.; Schoenle, Raphael S. News drive expectations about the economy’s future fundamentals. Climate change is big news: it will impact the economy profoundly but the effect will take some time to materialize in full. Climate-change expectations thus offer a unique opportunity to study the impact of news on the business cycle. We measure these expectations in a representative survey of US consumers. Respondents expect not much of an impact on GDP growth, but perceive a high probability of costly, rare disasters—suggesting they are salient of climate change. Furthermore, expectations vary systematically with socioeconomic characteristics, media consumption, various information treatments and over time. We calibrate a New Keynesian model with rare disasters to key results of the survey and find that shifts in climate change expectations operate like demand shocks and cause sizeable business cycle fluctuations. Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138652 2023-03-21T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138360 The Phillips Curve in the Euro Area: New Evidence Using Country-Level Data Wellmann, Susanne We study whether the trade-off between inflation and unemployment still exists in the euro area (EA). Using country-level data for member states of the EA, we estimate a refined specification of the Phillips curve in the spirit of Hazell et al. (2022) deploying a non-tradable price index to measure inflation. We find that the slope of the Phillips curve is small and hence the Phillips curve is flat in the EA, similarly to the US. Moreover, reference estimates based on aggregate data overstate the steepness of the Phillips curve considerably. Our findings imply that the insensitivity of inflation with respect to unemployment over the last decade is a result of firmly anchored inflation expectations. Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138360 2023-02-21T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138351 Consumption Categories, Household Attention, and Inflation Expectations: Implications for Optimal Monetary Policy Dietrich, Alexander M. What in inflation measure should central banks target? This paper shows optimal monetary policy targets headline inflation if households pay limited attention to different consumption categories when forming inflation expectations. This result stands in contrast to standard rational expectations models, where optimal policy targets core inflation. The core inflation rate excludes volatile energy and food prices (non-core) from headline inflation. Using novel survey data on inflation expectations for disaggregated consumption categories, I find household expectations are disproportionately driven by beliefs about future non-core prices. I develop a sparsity-based rational inattention model to account for the empirical evidence. While forming inflation expectations, households pay attention to the volatile non-core components; the stable core inflation component receives little attention. Finally, I embed this framework into a multi-sector New Keynesian model to derive the optimal inflation target. In the model, targeting headline inflation is optimal, whereas a core inflation target would fail to stabilize the economy sufficiently. Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/138351 2023-03-20T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/130788 Uncovering the Role of Education in the Uptake of Preventive Measures against Malaria in the African Population Kempter, Elisabeth; Upadhayay, Neha Bhardwaj In many African countries where malaria is endemic, this life-threatening disease is a leading cause of death. What role does education, in particular numeracy and literacy, play in malaria prevention and treatment-seeking? In this study we apply a birth cohort approach, which allows us to cover a time span of 60 years, and therefore, to provide a comprehensive view on the evolution of malaria prevention and treatment-seeking attitudes adapted among sub-Saharan African cohorts born during the 20th century. We use three different indicators to measure malaria control behavior: the share of respondents using insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs), the share of pregnant women taking antimalarial drugs, and the share of respondents taking their child to a medical facility when suffering from malaria symptoms like fever and cough. Our descriptive results suggest that younger birth cohorts are more likely to adapt malaria control measures than older ones. Based on a sample of 33 African countries, 407 regions, and a total of 1,960 observations, we perform multiple regressions using the pooled OLS estimator. We find that being numerate as well as being literate is positively associated with malaria protection and health-seeking behavior, though the numeracy coefficients are of larger magnitudes indicating that numeracy is at least as important as literacy. While malaria prevention and treatment-seeking behavior is complex and influenced by unobservables, we cannot control for, we account for the most relevant factors like gender, socio-economic status, topology, and urban-rural settings. Our findings show that in addition to education, the involvement of women in health-care decision-making, as well as the exposure to media, is positively correlated with malaria control. On the other hand, we find that a low socio-economic status makes the adaption of adequate malaria prevention and treatment-seeking behavior more difficult. In highly elevated regions and regions with lower precipitation, where malaria is less prevalent, people seem to pay less attention to protection measures. Finally, while malaria is more acute in rural regions, in urban areas antimalarial drugs are also commonly used for protection. Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/130788 2022-08-04T00:00:00Z