The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published its Annual Report 2013 (Report) on credit rating agencies (CRAs) in the European Union (EU). The Report also outlines ESMA’s supervisory work plan for this year.ESMA has found that CRAs continue to progress in how they comply...

The updated Q&A provides clarifications regarding the publication of sovereign ratings and conflict of interests concerning investments in CRAs.The purpose of this Q&A is to provide clarity on the requirements and practice in the application of the CRA Regulation and in particular, the CRA 3...

Trading Platforms (TPs), which have automated trading members, have been the focus of increased attention in recent years. ESMA therefore decided in 2013 to conduct a peer review on the Guidelines on systems and controls in an automated trading environment for trading platforms, ESMA 2012/122...

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a Consultation Paper on Guidelines on the information that should beperiodically submitted to ESMA by credit rating agencies (CRAs). In this Final Report, ESMA considers the responses received to the consultation paper during Q3 2014...

Inflation expectations constitute a subject of particular contemporary interest to central banks, especially those pursuing a monetary policy based on a strategy of direct inflation targeting. Macroeconomic theory indicates that the transmission of monetary policy impulses and their impact on...

Based on the householdsu0092 utility maximisation, a closed form approximation of the consumption function is derived and the deep parameters of the consumption function are estimated using aggregate euro area data. The novel element in our approach is the parameterisation of the information...

Does the general public know what central banks do? Is this kind of knowledge relevant? Using a survey of Dutch households, we investigate these questions for the case of the European Central Bank (ECB). Our findings suggest that knowledge on the ECB’s objectives is far from perfect. Both a...

Using comparable survey data from twelve European countries from 1994 to 2001 we investigate households’ attitudes towards mortgage indebtedness. We find that a given debt burden creates much higher distress in countries with fewer mortgage holders relative to countries where a significant...

Germans are still very fond of using cash. Of all direct payment transactions, cash accounts for an astounding 82% in terms of number, and for 58% in terms of value. With a new and unique dataset that combines transaction information with survey data on payment behaviour of German consumers, we...

Card issuers have mainly relied on rewards programs as their main strategic driver to increase electronic payments. However, there is scarce evidence on the effectiveness of rewards programs. This paper offers novel evidence on two key issues: i) it measures the impact of rewards programs on the...