This paper examines the relationship between competition policies and policies to preserve stability in the banking sector. Market structures and the relative importance of the three classical antitrust areas for banking are discussed, showing the predominance of merger review considerations for...

In a payment card association such as Visa, each time a consumer pays by card, the bank of the merchant (acquirer) pays an interchange fee (IF) to the bank of the cardholder (issuer) to carry out the transaction. This paper studies the determinants of socially and privately optimal IFs in a card...

Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial quot;interchangequot; fees to cardholders' banks, on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, over-subsidizing card usage and...

This paper analyses information from survey data collected in the framework of the Eurosystem's Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) on patterns of firm-level adjustment to shocks. We document that the relative intensity and the character of price vs. cost and wage vs. employment adjustments in response...

We study the effect of interbank market integration on small firm finance in the build-up to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use a comprehensive data set that contains contract terms on individual loans to 6,047 firms across 14 European countries between 1998:01 and 2005:12. We account for...

We assess the impact of the Eurosystem's Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs) on the lending policies of euro area banks. We first build a theoretical model in which banks compete in the credit and deposit markets. We distinguish between direct and indirect effects. Direct effects...

It has been argued that the increasing importance of global value chains necessitates a modification of conventional competitiveness measures. We compile a broad dataset including value added trade, gross exports and conventional and value added based real exchange rates. To sharply focus on...

Payment scale economies affect banking costs, competition in payment services, and pricing. Our scale measure relates operating cost to physical measures of European banking "output", finding large economies. This differs from relating total cost to the value of balance sheet assets (the...