In this paper we examine pricing behaviour of retail firms in the Netherlands during 1998-2003 using a large database with monthly price quotes of 49 articles, representing different product types. We have conducted this study in order to gain in sight in the degree of nominal rigidity of...

We model the impact of bank mergers on loan competition, banks' reserve holdings and aggregate liquidity. Banks compete in a differentiated loan market, hold reserves against liquidity shocks, and refinance in the interbank market. A merger creates an internal money market that induces financial...

This paper addresses a very European issue, the consolidation of securities trading and settlement infrastructures. In a two-country model, we analyze welfare implications of different types of consolidation. We find that horizontal integration of settlement systems is better than vertical...

We provide a general characterization of the structure of rational expectations equilibria of any degree of revelation for pure exchange, sequential economies, with deffinitely many states of private information, an incomplete financial market and nominal assets. We estimate the dimension of the...

The paper analyzes how the removal of barriers to entry in banking affect loan competition, bank stability and economic welfare. We consider a model of spatial loan competition where a market that is served by less efficient banks is opened to entry by banks that are more efficient in screening...

We propose a simple structural model of exchange rate determination which draws from the analytical framework recently proposed by Bacchetta and van Wincoop (2003) and allows us to disentangle the liquidity and information effects of order flow on exchange rates. We estimate this model employing...

We study optimal nominal demand policy in an economy with monopolistic competition and flexible prices when firms have imperfect common knowledge about the shocks hitting the economy. Parametrizing firms' information imperfections by a (Shannon) capacity parameter that constrains the amount of...

We study the functioning and possible breakdown of the interbank market in the presence of counterparty risk. We allow banks to have private information about the risk of their assets. We show how banks’ asset risk affects funding liquidity in the interbank market. Several interbank market...