The system of banking supervision in Europe is undergoing substantial reforms. According to Stigler's capture theory regulation often follows the preferences of producers. Therefore, the interests of the financial industry might be a major driving force for the ongoing supervisory reform debate....

Financial markets in Europe become more and more integrated. The persisting fragmentation of financial supervision, however, constitutes a lasting obstacle to integration. The aim of this paper is to assess these costs of supervisory fragmentation. We find clear evidence for the existence of...

We examine the euro area monetary policy transmission process using post-1999 data, with two main questions in mind: has it changed after u0096 and because of u0096 EMU and, if so, is it becoming homogeneous across countries. Given the data limitations, we concentrate on three blocks of...

The shock waves from the U.S. subprime crisis have intensified throughout the last two years and have by now reached almost all economies. The Commission economic forecasts clearly indicated that in Europe the recession would be the deepest since the foundation of the EU. The 2009 Brussels...

The present global financial crisis is the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has impacted severely on the European economy. It has forced policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere to respond with exceptional measures to counter the depressive effects of the crisis. The crisis has...