This paper studies a banking model of maturity transformation in which regulatory arbitrage induces the coexistence of regulated commercial banks and unregulated shadow banks. We derive three main results: First, the relative size of the shadow banking sector determines the stability of the...

This paper studies the relationship between the business cycle and financial intermediation in the euro area. We establish stylized facts and study their stability during the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Long-term interest rates have been exceptionally high and...

This paper examines whether European regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster and are more resilient to negative shocks than its less efficient peers. For this purpose, we measure a bank's intermediation quality by estimating its profit and cost efficiency...

We study the relation between firms financial structure, access to external finance and labor productivity using a unique dataset of firm-level data for several euro area countries during the period 1995-2011. The empirical strategy is twofold. First we build a synthetic indicator of financial...

In this study we investigate the determinants of financing obstacles using survey data on a sample of around 5000 firms from the euro area countries. This completely new survey – started at the end of 2009 - gives us the opportunity to test whether firm characteristics such as size, age,...

The paper develops an early-warning model for predicting vulnerabilities leading to distress in European banks using both bank and country-level data. As outright bank failures have been rare in Europe, the paper introduces a novel dataset that complements bankruptcies and defaults with state...

This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

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...

Specialness - the premium of procuring a specific security in the repo market - increased in the second half of 2011 for Italian government bonds. We assess the impact on specialness of the outright purchase program of the Eurosystem during the same period. Bonds bought by the Eurosystem had...