Changes in interest rates constitute a major source of risk for banks' business activity and can diversely affect their financial conditions and performance. We use a unique dataset to analyse Italian banks' exposure to interest rate risk during the crisis, relying on the standardized duration...

This paper studies the interaction between monetary and fiscal authorities while investors are coordinating on a speculative attack. The authorities want to achieve specific targets for output and inflation but also to avoid a regime change (i.e. sovereign default). They use the traditional...

This paper evaluates the impact of the second series of Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO2) on the amount of credit granted to non-financial private corporations and on the interest rates applied to loans in Italy, using data on credit transactions, bank and firm characteristics...

The model developed in this paper extends the framework of self-fulfilling credit market freezes proposed by Bebchuk and Goldstein (2011) by endogenizing firms' investments decisions. The existence of an aggregate investment threshold below which individual investment projects are unsuccessful...

This paper combines qualitative information from the Eurosystem Bank Lending Survey with micro-data on loan prices and quantities for the participating Italian banks to assess the role of supply and demand factors in credit developments, with a focus on the sharp slowdown of 2008-09. Both demand...

We consider an economy in which the oil costs, industrial production, and other macroeconomic variables fluctuate in response to fundamental domestic and external demand and supply shocks. We estimate the effects of these structural shocks on US monthly data for the 1973.1-2007.12 period using...

The prominent role assigned to money by the ECB has been the subject of an intense debate because of the declining predictive power of the monetary aggregate M3 for inflation in recent years. This paper reassesses the information content of monetary analysis for future inflation using dynamic...

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

Using a new monthly dataset on bank-level lending rates, we study the transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy in the euro area via shifts in the supply of credit. We find that a bank lending channel is operational for both types of measures, though its functioning...

We study the credit-risk-taking behaviour of Italian banks in response to changes in the term structure of interest rates using a confidential dataset on new loans to non-financial firms. We find that ex-ante risk-taking is negatively related to the short end of the yield curve but positively to...