We address the question to what extent a central bank can de-risk its balance sheet by unconventional monetary policy operations. To this end, we propose a novel risk measurement framework to empirically study the time-variation in central bank portfolio credit risks associated with such...

We propose a novel framework to assess financial system risk. Using a dynamic factor framework based on state-space methods, we construct coincident measures (‘thermometers’) and a forward looking indicator for the likelihood of simultaneous failure of a large number of financial...

We study spillovers from bank to sovereign risk in the euro area using difference specifications around the European Central Bank's release of stress test results for 130 significant banks on October 26, 2014. We document that following this information release bank equity prices in stressed...

A safe asset is of high credit quality, retains its value in bad times, and is traded in liquid markets. We show that bonds issued by the European Union (EU) are widely considered to be of high credit quality, and that their yield spread over German Bunds remained contained during the 2020...

We decompose euro area sovereign bond yields into five distinct components: i) expected future short-term risk-free rates and a term premium, ii) default risk premium, iii) redenomination risk premium, iv) liquidity risk premium, and a v) segmentation (convenience) premium. Iden- tification is...

We study the impact of increasingly negative central bank policy rates on banks' propensity to become undercapitalized in a financial crisis ('SRisk'). We find that the risk impact of negative rates is moderate, and depends on banks' business models: Banks with diversified income streams are...

We propose a novel framework to assess financial system risk. Using a dynamic factor framework based on state-space methods, we construct coincident measures (‘thermometers’) and a forward looking indicator for the likelihood of simultaneous failure of a large number of financial...

Macro-prudential authorities need to assess medium-term downside risks to the real economy, caused by severe financial shocks. Before activating policy measures, they also need to consider their short-term negative impact. This gives rise to a risk management problem, an inter-temporal trade-off...