The investment of the ECB reserves in US dollars and yen involves an annual performance assessment of portfolio managers, located in the Eurosystem�s national central banks. Employing new data on individual portfolios during 2002-2009, we study this peculiar tournament and show the...

Guarantees play an important role in debt contracts. They alter the risk for the lender, transform borrowers� incentives and, possibly, modify the equilibrium allocation of financial resources. This paper studies the role of guarantees on bank loans, using a sample of over 50,000 individual...

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a �lemons market� or to ask for liquidity �on tap� from central banks. This...

In this paper, after discussing the theoretical underpinnings of unconventional monetary policy measures, we review the existing empirical evidence on their effectiveness, focusing on those adopted by the European Central Bank and by the Federal Reserve. These measures operate in two ways:...