Most previous research on efficiency in banking takes a regulatory perspective. In contrast,this paper investigates the empirical relation between efficiency and profitability in five largeeconomies of the European Union during the period 1998-2005 and discusses the results fromthe perspective...

Monetary policies of the ECB and US Fed can be characterised by “Taylor rules”, that is bothcentral banks seem to be setting rates by taking into account the “output gap” and inflation.We also set up and tested Taylor rules which incorporate money growth and the euro-dollarexchange rate,...

The aim of this note is to provide an overview of various measures of “excess liquidity”,which can be defined as the deviation of the actual stock of money from an estimated equilibriumlevel. Given their dynamic nature, the excess liquidity measures under review are - in thelight of long and...

One major outcome of the review of the ECB’s “two pillar monetary policy strategy”, whichwas published on 8 May 2003, has been the de facto downgrading of the hitherto prominentrole assigned to the stock of money. According to the authors’ judgement, however, there is astrong theoretical...

This paper tackles the issue of the incompleteness of information available to thecentral bank when taking its monetary policy decisions. It is focused on euro areadata and based on the simplistic assumption of the central bank following a simplemonetary policy rule à-la-Taylor. Along the lines...

The rate of growth in bank loans to private households and firms in Germany hasdeclined substantially since early 2000 and currently stands at virtually zero. In thisarticle, we analyse whether cyclical factors (“demand-side driven”) or banks’ unwillingnessand/or inability to lend...

The emergence of e-commerce leads to a fundamental change for the financialindustry. The transition into a digital economy produces numerous newopportunities as well as great risks. B2B e-commerce in particular is considered apromising field for the future. As B2B is very closely related to...