The monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area has been adversely affected by the recent crises. Using survey data on thousands of euro area firms, we study factors that affect the access to finance of SMEs. We find that changes in bank funding costs and borrower leverage matter for...

We investigate whether consumer confidence has an independent effect on household spending. First, we control for a common set of factors that drive both consumer confidence and household spending. Next, we interpret the non-systematic residuals in the country consumer confidence equations as a...

We analyze the effect of supply constraints on the dynamics of house prices in the Netherlands. In particular, we look at whether income shocks lead to stronger house price increases in regions characterized with higher supply constraints. We use a panel dataset that contains 316 municipalities...

The monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area has been adversely affected by the recent crises. Using survey data on thousands of euro area firms, we study factors that affect the access to finance of SMEs. We find that changes in bank funding costs and borrower leverage matter for firms'...