Estimates of the welfare costs of inflation based on Bailey's (1956) methodology are typically computed on the basis of aggregate money demand models. Yet, the behavior of money demand is likely to vary across sectors. As a result, the impact on welfare of changes in the inflation regime may...

Empirical studies of the shoe-leather costs of inflation are typically computed using M1 as a measure of money. Yet, official data on M1 includes all currency issued, regardless of the country of residence of the holder. Using adjusted monetary data, we show that the failure to control for...

We estimate the shoe leather costs of inflation in the euro area by using monetary data adjusted for holdings of euro banknotes abroad. While we find evidence of marginally negative shoe leather costs for very low nominal interest rates, our estimates suggest that these costs are non-negligible...

We examine the effects of the government guarantee schemes for bank bonds adopted in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers demise to help banks retain access to wholesale funding. We describe the evolution and the pattern of bond issuance across countries to assess the effect of the schemes. Then...

We provide an assessment of the determinants of the risk premium paid by non-financial corporations on long-term bonds. By looking at 5,500 issues in the period 2005-2012, we find that the turbulence in the sovereign debt market has been a major driver of corporate risk in recent years. Compared...

Corporations of different euro-area countries faced noticeably different costs of funding in the bond market during the prolonged period of financial instability that started in 2007. We identify the determinants of corporate bond yield spreads in order to isolate country-specific effects as...

The paper analyzes the short-run impact of periods of strong monetary growth on inflation dynamics for 15 industrialized economies. We find that when robust money growth is accompanied by large increases in stock and house prices and loose credit conditions, the probability of recording an...

This paper proposes a possible way of assessing the effect on interest rate dynamics of changes in the decision-making approach, in the communication strategy and in the operational framework of a central bank. Through a GARCH specification we show that the US and the euro area displayed a...

Systemic risk and systemic importance are two different concepts that came out of the crisis and are now widely employed to assess the potential impact on the banking system as a whole of shocks that hit one specific bank. However, those two measures are often improperly used and...

We assess the impact of the corporate sector purchase programme (CSPP), the corporate arm of the ECB's quantitative easing policy, in its first year of activity (June 2016 – May 2017). Focusing on the primary bond market, we find evidence of a significant impact of the CSPP on yield spreads,...