From the onset of the 2007-2009 crisis, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have aggressively lowered interest rates. Both sets of changes are at odds with an anti-inflationary stance of monetary policy; indeed, as the crisis began in August 2007 inflation expectations were high...

We study sovereign yield dynamics and order flow in the largest euro-area treasury markets. We exploit unique transaction data to explain daily yield changes in the ten-year government bonds of Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany. We use a state space model to decompose these changes into (i) a...

We assess monetary convergence preceding the implementation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) through Kalman filtering estimates of the risk premium of eleven forward exchange rates of European and non-European currencies. Since all participating currencies are in effect identical from...

This paper empirically models China’s stock prices using conventional fundamentals: corporate earnings, risk-free interest rate, and a proxy for equity risk premium. It uses the estimated longrun stock price misalignments to date booms and busts, and analyses equity market reforms and excess...

This paper uses survey data for 29,000 households from 29 transition economies to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, bank ownership structure and the development of the financial infrastructure. At the household level we find that the holding of a...

This paper analyzes the efficiency of risk-taking decisions in an economy that is prone to systemic risk, captured by financial amplification effects that occur in response to strong adverse shocks. It shows that decentralized agents who have unconstrained access to a complete set of Arrow...

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 analyses the link between finance and growth by studying the effect that the process of financial deregulation and harmonisation of banking laws at the EU level has brought about on growth over the last 40 years. Our main findings point to the existence of a positive long-run growth...

The classical Bagehotu0092s conception of a Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) that lends to illiquid banks has been criticized on two grounds: on the one hand, the distinction between insolvency and illiquidity is not clear cut; on the other a fully collateralized repo market allows Central Banks to...