We identify frictions in the market for liquidity as well as bank-specific and market-wide factors that affect the prices that banks pay for liquidity, captured here by borrowing rates in repos with the central bank and benchmarked by the overnight index swap. We have price data at the...

We identify the effects of negative interest rate policies on bank behavior using difference-in differences identification and data on all Swiss banks. First, we find that going negative can interrupt not only the pass-through from policy to deposit rates, but also that to mortgage rates....

The Sovereign Money Initiative will be submitted to the Swiss people in 2018. This paper reviews the arguments behind the initiative and discusses its potential impact. I argue that several arguments are inconsistent with empirical evidence or with economic logic. In particular, controlling...

We introduce intermediation frictions into the classical monetary model with fully flexible prices. Trade in financial assets occurs through intermediaries who bargain over a full set of state-contingent claims with their customers. Monetary policy is redistributive and affects intermediaries'...

Bitcoin represents one of the most interesting technological breakthroughs and socio-economic experiments of the last decades. In this paper, we examine the role of speculative bubbles in the process of Bitcoin's technological adoption by analyzing its social dynamics. We trace Bitcoin's genesis...

Do markets value contract protections and does the quality of a legal system affect such valuations? We answer these questions by analysing a quasi-natural experiment whereby after January 1, 2013, newly issued sovereign bonds of all Eurozone countries started to include Collective Action...

Can local government spending spur entrepreneurial activity? To answer this question we study a setting where, around multiple pre-determined and non-manipulable thresholds, municipalities with lower tax revenues receive direct and different monetary grants from the national budget. Employing a...

Italian Abstract: In questo scritto si commenta la pronuncia della Corte di giustizia dell’Unione europea (in seguito ‘CGUE’ o la ‘Corte’), prima sezione, del 20 gennaio 2021 relativa al caso Lexel AB (nel prosieguo ‘Lexel’). Questa sentenza è stata emessa senza le conclusioni...

The measurement of house price movements is a vital topic from both academic and practical perspectives and hence has been the focus of much research. There is almost unanimous consensus in the literature that house price indexes should control for the quality of properties; the most widely used...