The euro crisis was fueled by the diabolic loop between sovereign risk and bank risk, coupled with cross-border flight-to-safety capital flows. European Safe Bonds (ESBies), a union-wide safe asset without joint liability, would help to resolve these problems. We make three contributions. First,...

The euro crisis was fueled by the diabolic loop between sovereign risk and bank risk, coupled with cross-border flight-to-safety capital flows. European Safe Bonds (ESBies), a union-wide safe asset without joint liability, would help to resolve these problems. We make three contributions. First,...

Banking has grown too much in Europe - in three senses. First, the European banking system has reached a size where its contribution to real economic growth is likely to be nil or negative. Second, the European financial structure is biased towards banks (rather than securities markets), which...

Europe’s financial structure has become strongly bank-based – far more so than in other economies. We document that an increase in the size of the banking system relative to equity and private bond markets is associated with more systemic risk and lower economic growth, particularly during...

Monetary, macro-prudential and micro-prudential policies are intimately linked. The macroprudential authority should be allocated to the body where the overall balance of synergies (between policy objectives) over conflicts and the required expertise are the largest. This report reviews the pros...

Keeping global warming below 2êC will require substantial reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades. To reduce emissions, economies must reduce their carbon intensity; given current technology, this implies a decisive shift away from fossil-fuel energy and related...

The report discusses a variety of issues involving difficulties in the banking sector, with a view to ascertaining the appropriate institutional infrastructure in the context of the European Union and the euro area. Forbearance on the part of banks dealing with delinquent borrowers is...

The European macro-prudential policy framework operates at two levels. First, the ESRB has a legal responsibility for macro-prudential oversight in the EU. Second, various national and EU authorities have responsibility for the implementation of macro-prudential policy. The creation of a...

Governments face a trade-off between insuring bondholders and taxpayers. If the government fully insures bondholders by manufacturing risk-free zero-beta debt, then it cannot also insure taxpayers against permanent macroeconomic shocks over long horizons. Instead, taxpayers will pay more in...