This paper examines trends in idiosyncratic risk in different ‘new economy’ and ‘old economy’ industries, and explores whether these developments can be attributed to the use of IT. A CAPM-based decomposition of equity returns is employed to estimate idiosyncratic risk. The results...

In mid-September 2008, following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, international interbank markets froze and interbank lending beyond very short maturities virtually evaporated. Despite massive central bank support operations and purchases of key assets, many financial markets remained impaired...

We integrate systemic financial instability in an empirical macroeconomic model for the euro area. We find that at times of widespread financial instability the macroeconomy functions fundamentally differently from tranquil times. We employ a richly specified Markov-Switching...

The debate on the sustainability of public finances is closely related to the analysis of the financial and macroeconomic consequences of government debt accumulation. Focusing on the USA, Germany and Italy over the 1983-2003 period, the central issue addressed in this paper is how the...

This paper introduces a new indicator of contemporaneous stress in the financial system named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped according to standard definitions of systemic risk. The main methodological innovation of the CISS is the...

Macroprudential policymakers assess medium-term downside risks to the real economy arising from financial imbalances and implement policies aimed at managing those risks. In doing so, they face an inherent intertemporal trade-off between the expected growth and downside risks. This paper reviews...

Macro-prudential authorities need to assess medium-term downside risks to the real economy, caused by severe financial shocks. Before activating policy measures, they also need to consider their short-term negative impact. This gives rise to a risk management problem, an inter-temporal trade-off...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indexes. Several existing index designs can be represented as special cases. We introduce a daily variant of the ECB's CISS for the euro area and the US. The CISS aggregates a representative set of stress...

We propose a novel empirical approach to inform monetary policymakers about the potential effects of policy action when facing trade-offs between financial and macroeconomic stability. We estimate a quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) for the euro area covering the real economy, monetary...