I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

This paper shows how the combined endogenous reaction of banks and investment funds to an exogenous shock can amplify or dampen losses to the financial system compared to results from single-sector stress testing models. We build a new model of contagion propagation using a very large and...

The unprecedented drop in international trade during the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 has mainly been analysed at the macroeconomic or sectoral level. However, exporters who are heterogeneous in terms of productivity, size or external financial dependence should be...

Beside large capital flows, euro area financial centres feature important and growing trade surpluses. We investigate the composition of their gross trade flows and disentangle (i) domestic and foreign production content that is (ii) directly traded with final absorbing economies or embedded in...

How do real interest rates affect financial fragility? We study this issue in a model in which bank borrowing is subject to rollover risk. A bank’s optimal borrowing trades off the benefit from investing additional funds into profitable assets with the cost of greater risk of a run by...

Financial stability indicators can be grouped into financial stress indicators that reflect heightened spreads and market volatility, and financial vulnerability indicators that reflect credit and asset price imbalances. Based on a panel of euro area countries, we show that both types of...

This paper uses a unique dataset where credit rejections experienced by euro area firms are matched with firm and bank characteristics. This allows us to study simultaneously the role that bank and firm weakness had in the credit reduction observed in the euro area during the sovereign debt...

The global nature of derivatives markets, and the presence of large key financial institutions trading in several markets across the globe, call for taking a “macro” view on the interconnections arising in the clearing network. Based on the analysis of derivatives transactions data reported...

Should monetary policy lean against financial stability risks? This has been a subject of fierce debate over the last decades. We contribute to the debate about “leaning against the wind” (LAW) along three lines. First, we evaluate the cost and benefits of LAW using the Svensson (2017)...

On 1 June 2018 the ECB celebrated its 20th anniversary. This paper provides a comprehensive view of the ECB's monetary policy over these two decades. The first section provides a chronological account of the macroeconomic and monetary policy developments in the euro area since the adoption of...