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...

We evaluate the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into euro area (EA) inflation by estimating an open economy New Keynesian model with Bayesian methods. In the model ERPT is incomplete because of local currency pricing and distribution services, with the latter allowing to distinguish between...