We discuss the notion of liquidity and liquidity risk within the financial system. We distinguish between three different liquidity types, central bank liquidity, funding and market liquidity and their relevant risks. In order to understand the workings of financial system liquidity, as well as...

The classical Bagehotu0092s conception of a Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) that lends to illiquid banks has been criticized on two grounds: on the one hand, the distinction between insolvency and illiquidity is not clear cut; on the other a fully collateralized repo market allows Central Banks to...

In this paper we propose definitions of funding liquidity and funding liquidity risk and present a simple, yet intuitive, measure of funding liquidity risk based on data from open market operations. Our empirical analysis uses a unique data set of 135 main refinancing operation auctions...

Unsecured interbank money market rates such as the Euribor increased strongly with the start of the financial market turbulences in August 2007. There is clear evidence that these rates reached levels that cannot be explained alone by higher credit risk. This article presents this evidence and...

Liquidity provision through its repo auctions has been one of the main instruments of the European Central Bank (ECB) to address the recent tensions in financial markets since summer 2007. In this paper, we analyse banks' bidding behaviour in the ECB's main refinancing operations (MROs) during...

We employ a time series econometric framework to explore the structural determinants of the spread between the European Overnight Rate and the ECB's Policy Rate (EONIA spread) aiming to explain the widening of the EONIA spread from mid-2004 to mid-2006. In particular, we estimate a model on the...

We study the functioning and possible breakdown of the interbank market in the presence of counterparty risk. We allow banks to have private information about the risk of their assets. We show how banks’ asset risk affects funding liquidity in the interbank market. Several interbank market...