This note looks at US$ and DM/Euro denominated government bond spreads relative to US and German benchmark bonds before and after the start of the current financial crisis. The study finds, first, that bond yield spreads before and during the crisis can largely be explained on the basis of...

This study examines empirically the information content of the euro area Bank Lending Survey for aggregate credit and output growth. The responses of the lending survey, especially those related to loans to enterprises, are a significant leading indicator for euro area bank credit and real GDP...

Any empirical analysis of the credit channel faces a key identification challenge: changes in credit supply and demand are difficult to disentangle. To address this issue, we use the detailed answers from the US and the confidential and unique Euro area bank lending surveys. Embedding this...

The quantity theory of money predicts a positive relationship between monetary growth and inflation over long-run horizons. However, in the short-run, transitory shocks to either money or inflation can obscure the inflationary signal stemming from money. The spectral analysis of time series...

This paper investigates whether output and inflation respond asymmetrically to credit shocks in the euro area. The methodology, based on a non-linear VAR system, follows work by Balke (2000) for the US. The results reveal evidence of threshold effects related to credit conditions in the economy....