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...

I offer a macroeconomic perspective on the “Reserves for All” (RFA) proposal to let the general public use electronic central bank money. After distinguishing RFA from cryptocurrencies and relating the proposal to discussions about narrow banking and the abolition of cash I propose an...

Central banks affect the resources available to fiscal authorities through the impact of their policies on the public debt, as well as through their income, their mix of assets, their liabilities, and their own solvency. This paper inspects the ability of the central bank to alleviate the fiscal...

We explore the implications of monetary unification for real interest rates and (relative) public debt levels. The adoption of a common monetary policy renders the risk-return characteristics of the participating countries more similar, so that the substitutability of their public debt increases...

The paper analyses the common European monetary policy based on a Mises-Hayek over-investment framework, which is combined with the theory of optimum currency areas. It shows how since the turn of the millennium a too expansionary monetary policy contributed to unsustainable over-investment...

We use an original monthly dataset of 131 individual euro area banks to examine the effectiveness and transmission mechanism of the Eurosystem's credit support policies since the start of the crisis. First, we show that these policies have indeed been succesful in stimulating the credit flow of...

In this paper, we provide evidence for a risk-taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area that works through the relaxation of lending standards for borrowers. Our dataset covers the period 2003Q1-2016Q2 and includes, in addition to the standard variables for real GDP growth,...

The paper compares the boom-and-bust cycles in Japan and Europe with respect to the reasons for excessive booms, the characteristics of the crises, and the (potential) effects of the crisis therapies. As in Japan the consequence of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies is the hysteresis of...

We derive counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the period 1999 to 2012 to approximate the interest rates countries would have implemented had they still been able to conduct independent monetary policy. We find that prior to the financial crisis the...