The three-month Eurepo interest rate, the euro component of the SDR interest rate basket, will be discontinued as of the end of 2014. The three-month Eurepo rate, administered by the European Money Market Institute (EMMI), has been the representative interest rate instrument of the euro area in...

This paper identifies macroeconomic stability, effective bank supervision, and an appropriate sequencing of stabilization, banking regulations, and interest rate policies as common characteristics of the relatively successful experiments in financial sector liberalization. Recent theoretical...

In recent years, the appropriate level and structure of interest tates have come to be seen as major issues in connection with stabilization programs undertaken by members. These issues arise from consideration both on the demand side, as interest rates affect the magnitude of aggregate demand,...

Forward-looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority leads least squares estimates to understate the true growth consequences of monetary policy interventions. We present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on real output growth for several European...

Market reaction to a change in official interest rates will depend on the extent to which the change is anticipated, and on how it is interpreted as a signal of future policy. In this paper, a technique is developed to separate the anticipated and unanticipated components of such changes and is...

This Technical Note reviews banking sector soundness and stress testing in Serbia. Serbia’s banking sector is well capitalized and liquid, but the corporate sector’s weak performance is a source of concern because of its adverse impact on nonperforming loans. Stress tests indicate that banks...

This technical note focuses on the stress testing exercise in 2010 for the financial sector assessment program based on the existing approaches of the Central Bank of Russia, as well as a separate bottom-up exercise. The tests covered broad ranges of risk factors. The single factor tests...

Australia’s four largest banks can be considered domestically systemic. They make up the lion’s share of the banking system, use similar business models, and are interconnected. The top four banks are relatively similar in terms of systemic importance, partly reflecting the authorities’...