This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are deemed...

A substantial literature has investigated the role of relationship lending in shielding borrowers from idiosyncratic shocks. Much less is known about how lending relationships and bank-specific characteristics affect the functioning of the credit market in an economy-wide crisis, when banks may...

The aim of this paper is to study cross-sectional differences in banks interest rates. It adds to the existing literature in two ways. First, it analyzes systematically the micro and macroeconomic factors that influence the price-setting behaviour of banks. Second, by using banks� prices...

This paper investigates possible non-linearities in the response of bank lending to monetary policy shocks in the euro area. The credit market is modelled over the period 1985-2005 by means of an Asymmetric Vector Error Correction Model (AVECM) involving four endogenous variables (loans to the...

An important element of the macro-prudential analysis is the study of the link between business cycle fluctuations and banking sector profitability and how this link is affected by institutional and structural characteristics. This work estimates a set of equations for net interest income,...

We find evidence of a bank lending channel for the euro area operating via bank risk. Financial innovation and the new ways to transfer credit risk have tended to diminish the informational content of standard bank balance-sheet indicators. We show that bank risk conditions, as perceived by...

This paper analyzes the linkages between banks� profitability and the main real and financial indicators. The results, derived by means of a reduced-form model for the period 1984-2002, highlight a strict relation between all income and cost components and the evolution of the economic...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...

The aim of this paper is to design the optimal institutional arrangement for a monetary union. Using a two-country rational expectations model, the study analyses how the conservatism of the area-wide central bank and the penalty system for fiscal deviation (Stability and Growth Pact) should be...

A growing number of studies on the US subprime market indicate that, due to asymmetric information, credit risk transfer activities have perverse effects on banks� lending standards. We investigate a large part of the market for securitized assets (�prime mortgages�) in Italy, a...