We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively...

The paper evaluates current account dynamics in countries with different exchange rate regimes within the EU. In this, the empirical analysis explicitly differentiates between countries with a flexible and a fixed exchange rate regime and members of a monetary union. In addition, we model the...

Applying a BVAR model, the present paper first identifies the possible drivers of Germany's TARGET claims. In this context, in terms of potential causes, a distinction is made between a rise in the global risk assessment, tensions within the euro area, and European monetary policy. It becomes...

Using micro price data underlying the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France, Germany and Italy, we estimate relative price trends over the product life cycle and show that minimizing price and mark-up distortions in the presence of these trends requires targeting a significantly positive...

This paper examines German and foreign bank factors that can explain cross-border central bank liquidity flows between Germany and the rest of the euro area. Using data from the German component of Eurosystem's real-time gross settlement system TARGET2 and BankFocus for the period between 2009...

The paper analyses the transmission of global financial shocks to individual member states of the European Monetary Union (EMU), in which monetary policy is delegated to the ECB and financial markets are fully integrated. Using a panel VAR model, we show that the asymmetric effects of global...

We present a sticky-price model incorporating heterogeneous firms and systematic firm-level productivity trends. Aggregating the model in closed form, we show that it delivers radically different predictions for the optimal inflation rate than canonical sticky price models featuring homogenous...

Commercial banks in some euro area member states hold large amounts of sovereign debt that offer a risk premium and hence higher yields than AAA-rated bonds issued by the most creditworthy countries. In particular, banks in vulnerable countries exhibit a bias towards domestically issued...