We compare the cost effectiveness of two pronatalist policies: (a) child allowances; and (b) daycare subsidies. We pay special attention to estimating how intended fertility (fertility before children are born) responds to these policies. We use two evaluation tools: (i) a dynamic model on...

We assess the degree of market fragmentation in the euro-area corporate bond market by disentangling the determinants of the risk premium paid on bonds at origination. By looking at over 2,400 bonds we are able to isolate the country-specific effects which are a suitable indicator of the market...

The euro crisis was fueled by the diabolic loop between sovereign risk and bank risk, coupled with cross-border flight-to-safety capital flows. European Safe Bonds (ESBies), a union-wide safe asset without joint liability, would help to resolve these problems. We make three contributions. First,...

Using novel monthly data for 226 euro-area banks from 2007 to 2015, we investigate the determinants of changes in banks' sovereign exposures and their effects during and after the crisis. First, public, bailed out and poorly capitalized banks responded to sovereign stress by purchasing domestic...

As the financial crisis gathered momentum in 2007, the United States Federal Reserve brought its policy interest rate aggressively down from 5 1/4 percent in September 2007 to virtually zero by December 2008. In contrast, although facing the same economic and financial stress, the European...

We identify crucial events during the European sovereign debt crisis and investigate their impact on the euro currency. In particular, we analyse how specific announcements related to vulnerable Eurozone member states, European Central Bank (ECB) actions, and credit rating downgrades affect the...

We study the information flow from the ECB on policy dates since its inception, using tick data. We show that three factors capture about all of the variation in the yield curve but that these are different factors with different variance shares in the window that contains the policy decision...

This paper quantifies the extent of heterogeneity in consumption responses to changes in real interest rates and house prices in the four largest economies in the euro area: France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. We first calibrate a life-cycle incomplete-markets model with a financial asset and...