Complex mortgages became a popular borrowing instrument during the bullish housing market of the early 2000s but vanished rapidly during the subsequent downturn. These non-traditional loans (interest only, negative amortization, and teaser mortgages) enable households to postpone loan repayment...

This paper studies the cyclical pattern of ex post markups in the banking system using balance-sheet data for a large set of countries. Markups are strongly countercyclical even after controlling for financial development, banking concentration, operational costs, inflation, and simultaneity or...

The empirical literature on interest rate transmission presents diverse and sometimes conflicting estimates. By discussing methodological and specification-related issues, the results of this paper contribute to the understanding of these differences. Eleven Austrian bank lending and deposit...

The terms and conditions on which bank loans are made to non-financial firms and households play a key role in the transmission of monetary policy. This paper analyses the relationship between German bank lending rates and both money market and capital market rates in the 1990s. This study...

The paper analyses the potential impact of stock market developments on lending behaviour from different perspectives. First we scrutinize the impact of stock market movements on the banks' and on the borrowers' balance sheets. Subsequently we estimate aggregate credit supply and demand...

Lending and borrowing interest rates are often slow to adjust to changing capital market conditions. This paper argues that national differences of the pass-through speed in the EU can be regarded as a retail-oriented indicator of financial integration. Based on an ECB database the speed of...

Market discipline for financial institutions can be imposed not only from the liability side, as has often been stressed in the literature on the use of subordinated debt, but also from the asset side. This will be particularly true if good lending opportunities are in short supply, so that...

We model the impact of bank mergers on loan competition, reserve holdings and aggregate liquidity. A merger changes the distribution of liquidity shocks and creates an internal money market, leading to financial cost efficiencies and more precise estimates of liquidity needs. The merged banks...

Modern bank management comprises both classical lending business and transfer of asset risk to capital markets through securitization. Sound knowledge of the risks involved in securitization transactions is a prerequisite for solid risk management. This paper aims to resolve a part of the...

This paper endeavours to illustrate the consequences of a credit squeeze by inserting a standard model of retail banks into some familiar macroeconomic models. Some possible policy conclusions are drawn about the benefits of incentives to increase lending at these times, and to reduce it in much...