Financial institutions

This paper examines how monetary policy announcements affect firms’ employment expectations. Using German survey data, we combine high-frequency monetary policy surprises with survey response dates to identify the immediate and dynamic effects of monetary policy on firm-level expectations and subsequent employment. Contractionary shocks lead firms to revise employment plans downward immediately and persistently, eventually reducing employment growth. Initially, hiring plans are reduced, while layoffs increase later.

Christopher Gust, Edward Herbst, and David López-SalidoWe develop a finite-horizon planning model in which firms choose how far ahead to plan when setting prices. Planning further ahead improves a firm's pricing decision but requires cognitive effort.

We show that monetary policy transmission is shaped not only by a sector’s own financial frictions but also by those prevailing in the broader production network. The latter, indirect frictions amplify the output and price effects of monetary policy and empirically dominate the direct ones. The amplification results from a downstream demand channel, as customers respond to tighter policy by purchasing fewer inputs. This is partly offset by an upstream cost channel, reflecting that suppliers raise prices to protect margins when financing costs rise.

This paper introduces reduced-form macroeconometric tools, emphasising quantile regression models, to identify key risk drivers for the euro area economy and assess risks around the baseline ECB/Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area inflation and growth. The analysis uses a large number of risk factors, going beyond the usual financial factors, employing a sequential selection approach with robustness checks.