The European Council's decisions to implement the De Larosiere recommendations for a reformed approach to micro-level financial supervision and a new European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) are to be welcomed. The ECB's central role in the ESRB is also to be welcomed. However, the limited role...

The past few months have exposed serious problems in relation to Europe's ability to cope with financial stress. Placing the new Financial Stability funds on a permanent basis, in the form of a new European Monetary Fund will be required if Europe is to deal effectively with the serious debt...

Every financial crisis brings in its wake demands for more information; the latest one is no exception. Because, in deceptively tranquil times, it is well-nigh impossible to foster the consensus necessary to improve data availability, such a window of opportunity must not be missed. To be sure,...

This paper provides an overview of bank funding trends in the euro area following the 2007-09 global financial crisis and the euro area crisis. It shows that funding has become segmented along national borders and that secured instruments are much more prevalent than previously. Rising debt...

The global financial crisis has shaken the foundations of the deceptively comfortable pre-crisis central banking world. Central banks face a threefold challenge: economic, intellectual and institutional. This essay puts forward a compass to help central banks sail in the largely uncharted waters...

This paper is one of the first to investigate the determinants of bond issuance by European banks. We use a unique database of around 50,000 bonds issued by 63 banks from 14 European countries, allowing us to differentiate between different types of long-term debt securities. By investigating at...

This paper investigates the overall effect of the European Central Bank's (ECB's) unconventional monetary policies (UMPs) implemented since 2008 on euro area bank retail lending and deposit rates offered to households and non-financial corporations. To do so, we use an analytical approach that...

This paper explores the impact of low (but) positive and negative market interest rates on euro area banks' net interest margin (NIM) and its components, retail lending and retail deposit rates. Using two proprietary bank-level data sets, I find a positive impact of the level of the short-term...