We investigate the empirical relationship between product market competition and prices in the retail grocery sector in the euro area. The study uses micro-data from ACNielsen on chain stores' census characteristics and price levels for a broad variety of products. We construct...

This paper uses the variability of money market rates to compare the conduct of the central bank's key market operation as a fixed-rate tender (FRT) or a variable-rate tender (VRT). Nowadays, leading central banks generally use FRTs or other approaches (e.g. target rates) which yield step...

The theory of liquidity management under uncertainty predicts that, under certain conditions, commercial banks will accumulate minimum reserve requirements linearly over the reserve maintenance period. This prediction is empirically tested using daily data (from March 2004 until February 2007)...

Although recent research shows that the euro has spurred cross-border financial integration, the exact mechanisms remain unknown. We investigate the underlying channels of the euro’s effect on financial integration using data on bilateral banking linkages among twenty industrial countries in...

This paper uses survey data for 29,000 households from 29 transition economies to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, bank ownership structure and the development of the financial infrastructure. At the household level we find that the holding of a...

We introduce professional financial advice in households’ choice to hold risky financial assets. Consistent with the predictions from a formal model, we present evidence that households’ trust in financial advice only matters when their perceived own financial capability is low. Instead, for...

We explore the practical relevance from a supervisor's perspective of a popular market-based indicator of the exposure of a financial institution to systemic risk, the marginal expected shortfall (MES). The MES of an institution can be defined as its expected equity loss when the market itself...

We propose a new method to identify the impact of a change in the tax burden on mutual fund inflows, exploiting a switch from an accrual-based to a realisation-based tax regime. We use quasi-experimental data from Italy where, starting from July 2011, the tax regime for domestic mutual funds was...

Europe’s financial structure has become strongly bank-based – far more so than in other economies. We document that an increase in the size of the banking system relative to equity and private bond markets is associated with more systemic risk and lower economic growth, particularly during...

We analyse the pass-through of monetary policy measures to lending rates to firms and households in the euro area using a unique bank-level dataset. Bank balance sheet characteristics such as the capital ratio and the exposure to sovereign debt are responsible for the heterogeneity of...