The global financial crisis has propelled several trends in wholesale financial markets that are causing an increase in the demand for high-quality collateral. On the money market more transactions are now secured instead of unsecured and in OTC derivatives markets CCP clearing for standardized...

International liquidity and collateral management poses a challenge to banks as it needs to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. These circumstances are now in a state of flux because of the financial crisis. Financial market behaviour has changed, the importance of high-quality collateral has...

Although - partly as a result of the financial crisis - central banks are increasingly inclined to accept foreign collateral, it is hard to find analyses dealing explicitly with the consequences of such collateral for a country's central bank and supervisor. The scientific literature on this...

High-quality collateral is in greater demand than before the financial crisis, due to more prudent counterparty risk management as well as new regulations governing OTC derivatives and liquidity. Against this background financial institutions are currently reassessing their collateral...

This paper investigates whether in OECD-countries the negative relation between central bank independence and inflation is related to culture, in the sense of common values and norms. It appears that inflation is lower in countries where people dislike uncertainty. The tolerance in a society...

We use Bulgarian firm level data to investigate the impact of liquidity constraints on investment performance. Internal funds are an important determinant of investment in most industrialized countries. We test whether internal funds are important for firm investment during the current...

Although during the last decades the importance of stock markets has increased in all OECD countries, the cross-country differences appear to be remarkably stable. In this paper we relate the factors determining cross-country differences in stock market activity to deeply rooted norms and values...