The paper provides an overview of recent asset price developments in France in the light of analytical research carried out at the Banque de France. Like in many other countries, historically low interest rates have boosted asset price dynamics in France over recent years. The paper attempts to...

We set up a model where asset price bubbles due to risk shifting can be moderated by capital requirements. However, imperfect information about the ratio of required capital, or, in the context of the sub-prime crisis, the extent of regulatory arbitrage, introduces uncertainty about the risk...

Reserve requirements are a prominent policy instrument in many emerging countries. The present study investigates the circumstances under which reserve requirements are an appropriate policy tool for price or financial stability. We consider a small open economy model with sticky prices,...

In order to analyse the interest rate transmission mechanism, we study daily Euro-rates term structure for the US, Germany, and the UK between 1983 and 1997. We estimate multivariate VECM-GARCH models, which takes into account most of the usual feaures of financial data (non-stationarity,...

The rate-of-return-dominance puzzle asks why low-return assets, like fiat money, are used in actual economies given that risk-free higher-return assets are available. As long as this question remains unresolved, most conclusions from monetary models which arbitrarily restrict the marketability...

This paper studies the social value of information about the future when agents are rationally inattentive. In a stylized OLG model of inflation the central bank (CB) can set money supply in response to the current price. The CB has perfect foresight about the future T shocks and releases this...

This paper analyzes a two-country model of currency, banks and endogenous default to study whether impediments to credit market integration across jurisdictions impact the desirability of a currency union. We show that when those impediments induce a higher cost for banks to manage cross-border...

This paper argues that the cross-sectional approach to durations is essential to understand nominal rigidity because this captures the fact that price-spells are generated by firms' price-setting behavior. Since the distribution of durations is dominated by a proliferation of short contracts,...

In general, empirical studies having evaluated with firm individual data the effects of structural labour market reforms in European countries do not reach unambiguous conclusions. In particular, they find that reforms increasing incentives to lower the number of temporary labour contracts do...

We investigate the stability of M3 income velocity in the euro area. We apply a set of breakpoint procedures to examine this issue and conclude that at least one structural change occurred around 2000-2001. We also find evidence of another structural break around 1992-1993. These two breaks seem...