This study of the major industrial countries' interbank markets for overnight loans links the behavior of very short-term interest rates to the operating procedures of the countries' central banks. Previous studies have focused on key features of the U.S. federal funds rate's behavior. We find...

The Eurosystem and the U.S. Federal Reserve System follow quite different approaches to the execution of monetary policy. The former institution adopts a hands-off approach that largely delegates to depository institutions the task of stabilizing their own liquidity at high frequency. The latter...

The volatility patterns of overnight interest rates differ across industrial countries in ways that existing models, designed to replicate the features of the U.S. federal funds market, cannot explain. This paper presents an equilibrium model of the overnight interbank market that matches these...

We explore the implications of monetary unification for real interest rates and (relative) public debt levels. The adoption of a common monetary policy renders the risk-return characteristics of the participating countries more similar, so that the substitutability of their public debt increases...

This paper analyses the determinants of the natural rate of interest in a non-linear model where agents are uncertain over both future technology growth and the future course of monetary policy. I show that the real natural rate can be affected by sizable uncertainty premia, including premia...

We analyze the properties of the natural rate of interest in an economy where nominal debt contracts generate a spread between loan rates and the policy interest rate. In our model, monetary policy has real effects in the flexible-price equilibrium, because it affects the credit spread. Relying...