The move to monetary union in Europe led to convergence of interest rates among the participating countries. This was associated with notable cross-country differences in the behaviour of key macroeconomic aggregates. Compared to the low interest rate countries, former high interest rate...

In this paper we argue that, for a group of converging economies of the European Union, participation in the euro area has been associated with easier access to financing by domestic economic agents. Easier access to financing was a significant impulse leading to a sharp increase in households'...

This paper provides a toolkit for extracting accurate information about inflation expectations using inflation-linked bonds. First, we show how to estimate term structures of zero-coupon real rates and break-even inflation rates (BEIRs) in the euro area. This improves the analysis of...

There is strong evidence that on-the-run U.S. Treasury securities trade much more liquidly and at significantly higher prices than their off-the-run counterparts. We examine if the same phenomenon is present in the German government bond market whose market structure differ markedly from that of...

We analyse euro area investors' portfolio rebalancing during the ECB's Asset Purchase Pro- gramme at the security level. Based on net transactions of domestic and foreign securities, we observe euro area sectors' capital ows into individual securities, cleaned from valuation effects. Our...