This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are deemed...

In this paper, we study the co-movements between stock market indices and real economic activity over the business cycle in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, using two complementary approaches in our analysis. First, we identify the turning points in real economy...

This article aims at estimating leading indicators of the American economy with financial variables. We use two types of hidden Markov chains models, a quantitative one (Krolzig (1997)) and a qualitative one (Gregoir and Lenglart (2000)). These models provide a robust and reliable framework to...

This paper shows that the Fed reacts to change in spreads between corporate bond yields and government bond yields over and beyond their information content on future inflation and future activity. This result, obtained in a GMM framework, is confirmed by simulation methods. Moreover, when...

The recent rise of excess liquidity in the United States and in the euro zone did not result in a resurgence of inflation. Excess liquidity, rather than heading towards the market of consumer goods, could have moved towards the asset markets. In the data covering the period going from 1980 to...

This paper studies how financial development affects the relation between average growth and growth volatility through liquidity crises. We .first establish in a micro model that imperfect enforceability creates a short term bias in contracts financing long term investments. This can generate...

This paper provides an analysis of co-movements between real and financial variables in three new EU member countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) and the euro area. It focuses on the co-movement between real credit granted to firms and real industrial output on the one hand, and...

This paper addresses the macroeconomic impact of international financial integration. I first provide empirical evidence that foreign banking penetration can be associated with a contraction of banking credit, especially in countries with poor credit markets. Second I present a model in which...

The paper provides an overview of recent asset price developments in France in the light of analytical research carried out at the Banque de France. Like in many other countries, historically low interest rates have boosted asset price dynamics in France over recent years. The paper attempts to...

We study the macroeconomic effects of rational asset bubbles in an overlapping-generations economy where asset trading requires specialized intermediaries and where agents freely choose between working in the production or in the financial sector. Frictions in the market for deposits create...