With a view to establishing a Capital Markets Union (CMU), efforts to integrate (private) capital markets and private risk-sharing in the European Union are underway. However, the single (capital) market will be burdened by a perennial potential threat to sovereign bond market stability in the...

The euro crisis remains unresolved even as financial markets may seem calm for now. The current euro regime is inherently flawed, and recent reforms have failed to turn this dysfunctional regime into a viable one. Our investigation is informed by the "cartalist" critique of traditional "optimum...

This paper investigates the impact of ample liquidity provision by the European Central Bank on the functioning of the overnight unsecured interbank market from 2008 to 2014. We use novel data on interbank transactions derived from TARGET2, the main euro area payment system. To identify...

We build a model of collateral choice by banks that allows to recover the opportunity cost of collateral use and the access of banks to the interbank market. We estimate the model using country-level data on assets pledged to the European Central Bank from 2009 to 2011. The model can be used to...

This paper documents stress in the unsecured overnight interbank market in the euro area over the course of the financial and sovereign debt crisis in Europe. We find that stress i) leads some banks to borrow in the market at rates that are higher than the rate of the marginal lending facility...

Unlike the crisis years of 2007-2009 (when the insolvency of large banks was a major problem), the current round of the global financial crisis has fiscal origins. Almost all developed countries suffer from an excessive public debt burden that has been built up over the last two decades or more....

We show that illiquid assets such as bank loans are used by euro area banks both as central bank collateral for short-term liquidity insurance purposes and for longer-term funding purposes for issuing covered bonds or asset-backed securities. We then explore the determinants of the choice of...

This paper investigates the causes behind the euro debt crisis, particularly Germany's role in it. It is argued that the crisis is not primarily a sovereign debt crisis but rather a (twin) banking and balance of payments crisis. Intra-area competitiveness and current account imbalances, and the...

This paper investigates Germany's vulnerability to the ongoing Euroland crisis. In 2010-11, Germany experienced a strong rebound from the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The Euroland crisis then meant record low interest rates and a depressed euro that boosted German extra-area exports. But...

This paper discusses the role of state intervention for prevention, containment, and resolution of financial crises based mainly on the Korean experience during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Crises in emerging market and developing economies tend to be more complicated than those faced by...