This paper identifies the various channels that give rise to a "sovereign-bank nexus" whereby the financial health of banks and sovereigns is intertwined. We find that banks and sovereigns are linked by three interacting channels: banks hold large amounts of sovereign debt; banks are protected...

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...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country's prosperity. The paper focuses on political events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy's financial...