The European Central Bank (ECB) took many measures to combat the eurozone’s rolling financial crisis. For providing desperately scarce dollars to eurozone banks, the ECB relied on the U.S. Federal Reserve. Using a novel econometric framework, we identify financial markets’ response to the...

Central banks unexpectedly tightening policy rates often observe the exchange value of their currency depreciate, rather than appreciate as predicted by standard models. We document this for Fed and ECB policy days using eventstudies and ask whether an information effect, where the public...

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are receiving more attention than ever before. Yet the motivations for issuance vary across countries, as do the policy approaches and technical designs. We investigate the economic and institutional drivers of CBDC development and take stock of design...

This brief exposition suggests that the Federal Reserve System temporarily guarantee a lower bound on stock prices in order to escape the current combination of liquidity trap and credit crunch. It shortly discusses reasons for this measure, consequences, and some alternatives. It is meant as a...

Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis but also during the recovery period. Cash-rich SMEs could maintain their capital stock during the global financial crisis, while cash-poor rivals reduced theirs. This gave...

Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis but also during the recovery period. Cash-rich SMEs could maintain their capital stock during the global financial crisis, while cash-poor rivals reduced theirs. This gave...

We analyse the effects of macroprudential and monetary policies and their interactions using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model tailored to New Zealand. We find that the main historical drivers of house prices are shocks specific to the housing sector. While our...

In view of regional house prices drifting apart, we examine whether regionally differentiated macroprudential policies can address financial stability concerns and moderate house price differences. To this end, we disaggregate both the household sector and the housing stock in a two-region DSGE...

During the last decades a consensus has emerged that it is impossible to disentangle liquidity shocks from solvency shocks. As a consequence the classical lender of last resort rules, as defined by Thornton and Bagehot, based on lending to solvent illiquid institutions appear ill-suited to this...

This paper explores the potential effectiveness of the ECB's Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program in safeguarding an appropriate monetary policy transmission. Since the program aims at manipulating bank lending rates by conducting sovereign bond purchases on secondary markets, a stable...