We evaluate the effects of targeted credit injections of the central bank in the euro area. The aggregate policy impacts of credit easing on financial markets, bank lending and key macroeconomic variables are measured with a novel identification approach based on high-frequency web search data....

In response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have adopted unconventional monetary policy instruments. We investigate if one of these, purchases of long-term government debt, could be a valuable addition to conventional short- term interest rate policy...

Do the prevailing unusually and persistently low real interest rates reflect a decline in the natural rate of interest as commonly thought? We argue that this is only part of the story. The critical role of financial factors in influencing medium-term economic fluctuations must also be taken...

Prevailing explanations of the decline in real interest rates since the early 1980s are premised on the notion that real interest rates are driven by variations in desired saving and investment. But based on data stretching back to 1870 for 19 countries, our systematic analysis casts doubt on...

Over 2010-2016, municipal debt in Germany crowded out private investment worth 1 percent of GDP. Forced to lend to municipalities by their statutes, local public banks compensated for declining municipal-debt yields by charging higher rates to firms in Germany's locally segmented credit markets....

Although beneficial allocational effects have been a central motivation for the Basel II capital adequacy reform, the interaction of these effects with Basel II's procyclical impact has been less discussed. In this paper, we investigate the effect of Basel II on the efficiency of bank lending....

Although beneficial allocational effects have been a central motivator for the Basel II capital adequacy reform, the interaction of these effects with Basel II's procyclical impact has been less discussed. In this paper, we investigate the effect of capital requirements on the allocation of...

We show how banks excessive risk-taking, stemming from informational asymmetries in loan markets, can lead to an excessive output loss when a recession starts. Risk-based capital requirements can alleviate the output loss by reducing excessive risk-taking in normal times. Model simulations...

We study the effects on credit allocation and bank stability of introducing a leverage ratio requirement (LRR) on top of risk-based capital requirements, as in Basel III. For the current 3% LRR, both low-risk and high-risk loan rates and volumes remain essentially unchanged, because banks...

This paper examines what institutional and bank-specific factors determine bank stock price synchronicity. Using data on 37 countries from 1996-2007, we find that bank stocks are more aligned with the whole market (1) during the financial crisis; (2) in countries that have more credit provided...