We study whether the mechanism design in the central bank liquidity auctions matters for the interbank money market interest rate levels and volatility. Furthermore, we compare different mechanisms to sell liquidity in terms of revenue, efficiency and auction stage interest rate levels and...

The present crisis has revealed that, as expected, much of the safety net for handling failures in the banking system is deficient, particularly for cross-border banks, and the present problems had to be handled by a range of ad hoc measures. The principal new measure that needs to be undertaken...

We study the long standing issue of whether markets can supply banks with sufficient liquidity or whether markets should be complemented with a lender of last resort (LOLR). For this purpose, we develop an extended version of the recent model of Holmström and Tirole (1998) on the supply of...

This paper analyses the determinants of banks’ loan loss allowances for samples of US banks and three non-US samples: a group of 21 countries, Canada and Japan. The model includes fundamental (or non-discretionary) determinants of the allowance such as non-performing loans, and discretionary...

This paper presents a model of the optimal bidding behaviour of a single bank in the context of fixed rate liquidity tenders. Banks’ bidding is shown to depend crucially on the central bank’s liquidity policy as regards tender allotments. The paper also analyses ECB liquidity policy in terms...

This paper constructs an equilibrium model for the short-term money market, when the central bank provides liquidity via variable rate tenders. The relation between market rate of interest and liquidity is derived from a single bank’s profit maximisation problem in the interbank market, and...

We sketch a theoretical framework for comparing the properties of funded LOLR schemes. We construct an idealized lender of last resort and investigate how it formulates policy under alternative public and private governance structures. The alternatives are a (first-best) social utility maximizer...

This paper studies the gain from using money as an indicator when monetary policy in made under data uncertainty. We use a forward and backward looking model, calibrated for the euro area. The policymaker cannot completely observe the state of the economy. Money reveals some of the private...

Using recent advances in time-varying spectral methods, this research analyses the growth cycles of the core of the euro area in terms of frequency content and phasing of cycles. The methodology uses the con-tinuous wavelet transform (CWT) and also Hilbert wavelet pairs in the setting of a...

Sufficiently flexible labour markets are considered an important precondition for countries to benefit from membership in the monetary union. Economic policy coordination within the European Community is extensive and includes issues related to labour market structures. In this paper we study...