Small and medium-sized enterprises are a centrepiece of Europe's economy. Due to their limited size and their generally lower creditworthiness, their access to financial market instruments is more limited than for large enterprises, which benefit from more elaborate Treasury operations,...

This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are deemed...

What influences banks’ borrowing costs in the unsecured money market? The objective of this paper is to test whether measures of centrality, quantifying network effects due to interactions among banks in the market, can help explain heterogeneous patterns in the interest rates paid to borrow...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model for the positive and normative analysis of macroprudential policies. Optimizing financial intermediaries allocate their scarce net worth together with funds raised from saving households across two lending activities, mortgage and corporate lending....

This paper examines the sensitivity of non-financial corporate lending to banks' capital ratio and their supervisory capital requirements. We use a unique database for the French banking sector between 2003 and 2011 combining confidential bank-level Bank Lending Survey answers with the...

The paper describes the methods used by the French Banking Supervision Authority (ACP) to run stress tests for the corporate credit portfolio, through credit migration matrices (or transition matrices). This approach is currently used for “top-down” stress tests exercises. Developed for...

The paper describes the methods used by the French Banking Supervision Authority (ACP) to run stress tests for the corporate credit portfolio, through credit migration matrices (or transition matrices). This approach is currently used for “top-down” stress tests exercises. Developed for...

We analyze the risk-taking behavior of heterogenous intermediaries that are protected by limited liability and choose both their amount of leverage and the risk exposure of their portfolio. Due to the opacity of the financial sector, outside providers of funds cannot distinguish “prudent”...

The SRISK measure is advertised as measuring the recapitalization needed by a financial institution in the event of a financial crisis. It is computed from the estimated reaction of the institution’s share price in the event of a sharp drop in market prices. This indicator relies both on an...

This paper studies the scope for cross-border contagion in the European banking sector using true bilateral exposure data. Using a model of sequential solvency and liquidity cascades in networks, we analyze geographical patterns of loss propagation from 2008 to 2012. We study the distribution of...