Summary Understanding the factors determining overnight rates is crucial both for central bankers and private market participants, since, assuming the validity of the expectation theory of the term structure of interest rates, expectations with regard to this “monadic” maturity should...

We study bidder bahavior and performance in 53 main refinancing operations (repo auctions) of the European Central Bank (ECB). The data set starts with the first auctions after the ECB changed from fixed rate tenders to variable rate tenders. We find that private information and the winnner's...