At the height of the European sovereign debt crisis, the European Central Bank decided to purchase distressed European government bonds. Even worse, and more importantly, the ECB is providing direct support of several hundred billions of euros to troubled banks via its normal monetary policy...

This study puts the monetary transmission process in the eurozone between 2003 and 2011 under closer scrutiny. For this purpose, we investigate the interest rate pass-through from money market to various loan rates for up to twelve countries of the European Monetary Union. Applying different...

We propose an alternative way of estimating Taylor reaction functions if the zero-lower-bound on nominal interest rates is binding. This approach relies on tackling the real rather than the nominal interest rate. So if the nominal rate is (close to) zero central banks can influence the inflation...