The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

We find evidence of a bank lending channel for the euro area operating via bank risk. Financial innovation and the new ways to transfer credit risk have tended to diminish the informational content of standard bank balance-sheet indicators. We show that bank risk conditions, as perceived by...

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

This paper provides a systematic empirical analysis of the role of the housing market in the macroeconomy in the U.S. and the euro area. First, it establishes some stylised facts concerning key variables in the housing market on the two sides of the Atlantic, such as real house prices,...

We assess the impact on the Italian economy of the main unconventional monetary policies adopted by the ECB in 2011-2012 (SMP, 3-year LTROs and OMTs) by following a two-step approach. We evaluate their effects on money market interest rates, government bond yields and credit availability and...

This paper tests cross-sectional differences in the effectiveness of the bank lending channel of monetary policy in Italy from 1986 to 1998 using a panel approach. After a monetary tightening the decrease in deposits subject to reserve requirements is sharper for those banks that have less...

The dramatic increase in securitisation activity has modified the functioning of credit markets by reducing the fundamental role of liquidity transformation performed by financial intermediaries. We claim that the changing role of banks from �originate and hold� to �originate,...

This paper uses a Factor Augmented Vector Autoregressive model to assess the macroeconomic impact of the euro-area sovereign debt crisis and the effectiveness of the European Central Bank's conventional monetary policy. First, our results show that in the countries most affected by the crisis,...

This publication collects the papers presented at the workshop entitled "The sovereign debt crisis and the euro area", held at the Bank of Italy in Rome on 15 February 2013. In recent years the Economic Research and International Relations Area of the Bank of Italy has conducted several analyses...

The aim of this paper is to study cross-sectional differences in banks interest rates. It adds to the existing literature in two ways. First, it analyzes systematically the micro and macroeconomic factors that influence the price-setting behaviour of banks. Second, by using banks� prices...