At the onset of the Covid-19 outbreak, central banks and supervisors introduced dividend restrictions as a new policy instrument aimed at supporting lending to the real economy and strengthening banks’ capacity to absorb losses. In this paper we estimate the impact of the ECB’s dividend...

This paper assesses the usefulness of private credit variables and other macrofinancial and banking sector indicators for the setting of Basel III/CRD IV countercyclical capital buffers (CCBs) in a multivariate early warning model framework, using data for 23 EU Members States from 1982 Q2 to...

We test if unconventional monetary policy instruments influence the competitive conduct of banks. Between q2:2010 and q1:2012, the ECB absorbed €218 billion worth of government securities from five EMU countries under the Securities Markets Programme (SMP). Using detailed security holdings...

Exploiting confidential data from the euro area, we show that sound banks can pass negative rates on to their corporate depositors without experiencing a contraction in funding. These pass-through effects become stronger as policy rates move deeper into negative territory. Banks offering...

In this paper, we survey the nascent literature on the transmission of negative policy rates. We discuss the theory of how the transmission depends on bank balance sheets, and how this changes once policy rates become negative. We review the growing evidence that negative policy rates are...

We quantitatively assess the macroeconomic effects of country-specific supply-side reforms in the euro area by simulating EAGLE, a multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model. We consider reforms in the labor and services markets of Germany (or, alternatively, Portugal) and the rest of the...

I find that the Euro-system can stimulate the economy beyond the policy rate by increasing the size of its balance sheet or the monetary base. The transmission mechanism turns out to be different compared to traditional interest rate innovations: (i) whilst the effects on economic activity and...

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly available quarterly dataset of fiscal variables for the period 1981-2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro area countries and the US, we use a standard structural VAR framework, and...

The financial crisis has highlighted the need for models that can identify counter-party risk exposures and shock transmission processes at the systemic level. We use the euro area financial accounts (flow of funds) data to construct a sector-level network of bilateral balance sheet exposures...

This paper explores implications of climate change for fiscal policy by assessing the impact of large scale extreme weather events on changes in public budgets. We apply alternative measures for large scale extreme weather events and conclude that the budgetary impact of such events ranges...