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Inflation has been well contained over the last decades in most industrialized countries. This implies, however, that memories of high inflation are likely to fade, because over time larger parts of the population have never experienced high inflation, whereas those who have might forget. This paper tests whether memories of high inflation affect agents' preferences about the importance attached to price stability, using a large database covering over 50,000 survey responses from 23 countries over the years 1981-2000. It finds that memories of hyperinflation are there to last, whereas those of less drastic inflation experiences tend to erode after around 10 years. The recent decline in the importance attached to price stability does therefore most likely reflect mitigated inflation concerns in an environment of low and stable inflation, but also the consequences of fading memories of high inflation. The longer central banks have successfully delivered price stability, the more important it is for them to engage in a pro-active communication, especially with the younger generations, about the merits of low and stable inflation. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

Climate change poses large economic costs to governments and societies. Reducing individuals' CO2 footprints is central in mitigating climate change. In a new paper, we show that providing information on combating climate change motivates individuals to take costly actions to offset CO2 emissions. Presenting the information as the result of scientific research is as effective as framing it as the behaviour of other people. Individuals' responses vary depending on their socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes towards climate change. Furthermore, individuals choose information that aligns with their views. Individuals who actively gather information about climate change have a higher willingness to pay for carbon offsets.

This paper provides evidence for regulatory arbitrage within the class of assetbacked securities (ABS) based on individual asset holding data of German banks. I find that those banks operating with tight regulatory constraints pick the securities with the highest yield and lowest collateral quality among ABS with the same regulatory risk weight. This ABS selection allows banks to increase the return on the capital required for an ABS investment by a factor of four.

We address the question of whether various types of speculative investor correctly anticipate future USD/EUR currency movements or whether they tend rather to react to past exchange rate movements. Throughout the analysis, we differentiate between large and small traders, and an upper bound of total speculation. To account for the large number of testable hypotheses, we contrast results obtained from predictive regressions based on individual significance tests with those based on either controlling the false discovery rate (FDR) or the family-wide error rate (FER). While the statistical evidence in favor of a causal relationship from speculative positions to exchange rate movements, and therefore an inefficient Euro futures market, largely collapses if we account for multiple testing, such a pattern does not emerge in the other direction. In addition, findings based on a contemporaneous analysis point to some notable differences between small and large speculators, and a non-linear relationship between USD/EUR movements and changes in the open interest position of large speculators.