Applying the identification strategy employed by Driscoll (2004) for the United States, this paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of a bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area. In addition, and in contrast to recent findings for the US, we find that in...

Heterogeneity in the response of banks to a change in monetary policy is an important element in the transmission of this policy through banks. This paper examines the role of bank liquidity, capitalization and market power as internal factors influencing banks' reaction in terms of lending and...

In this paper, we survey the nascent literature on the transmission of negative policy rates. We discuss the theory of how the transmission depends on bank balance sheets, and how this changes once policy rates become negative. We review the growing evidence that negative policy rates are...

Using new quarterly narrative evidence, this paper examines the macroeconomic impact of reforms of unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the euro area from a Bayesian narrative panel VAR. The approach complements existing micro-econometric evidence by aligning...

Negative monetary policy rates are associated with a particular friction because the remuneration of retail deposits tends to be floored at zero. We investigate whether this friction affects banks’ reactions when the policy rate is lowered to negative levels, compared to a standard rate cut in...

We study the impact of higher bank capital buffers, namely of the Other Systemically Important Institu- tions (O-SII) buffer, on banks' lending and risk-taking behaviour. The O-SII buffer is a macroprudential policy aiming to increase banks' resilience. However, higher capital requirements...

The literature on fiscal multipliers finds that spending-based fiscal consolidations tend to have more benign macro-economic consequences than revenue-based consolidations. By directly comparing ex-post data with consolidation plans, we present evidence of a systematically weaker follow-up of...

We show that negative monetary policy rates induce systemic banks to reach-for-yield. For identification, we exploit the introduction of negative deposit rates by the European Central Bank in June 2014 and a novel securities register for the 26 largest euro area banking groups. Banks with more...