This paper offers a new framework for the assessment of financial market liquidity and identifies two types: search liquidity and systemic liquidity. Search liquidity, i.e. liquidity in normal times, is driven by search costs required for a trader to find a willing buyer for an asset he/she is...

This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

In response to the turmoil in global financial markets which began in the second half of 2007, central banks have changed the way in which they implement monetary policy. This has drawn particular attention to the type of collateral used for backing central banks' temporary open market...

The aims of this paper are twofold: first, we attempt to express the threshold of a single quot;Aquot; rating as issued by major international rating agencies in terms of annualised probabilities of default. We use data from Standard amp; Poor's and Moody's publicly available rating histories to...

Following the adoption by the Basel Committee of new capital rules for banks, a process is now taking place in the EU to transpose the rules into Community law and, ultimately, into national legislation. This paper gives an overview of the main issues that relate to the EU implementation, mainly...

This paper investigates the potential impact of the growing influence of the opinions of credit rating agencies (CRAs) on market dynamics. This impact can be seen as a consequence of the information content of the ratings themselves or indirectly as a consequence of the hardwiring of ratings...