On 6 June 2024, the European Central Bank (ECB) lowered the main refinancing operations (MRO) rate from 4.5% to 4.25%. This decision followed a period of elevated interest rates intended to combat high inflation in the euro area, which peaked at 10.6% in October 2022 in the aftermath of the...

Monetary policy increasingly relies on steering market expectations about future policy. This paper identifies a monetary policy news shock based on a VAR model. A monetary news shock is equivalent to new information about the Fed's future monetary policy becoming available today. One example of...

In July 1990, the project of the European Monetary Union (EMU) started and finally led to the introduction of the Euro in January 1999. This paper analyses the development of the government bond market integration during the three stages of the EMU. Based on the results from dynamic conditional...

We argue that current sovereign debt management lacks important incentives for governments and politicians to fulfill it in a sustainable and long-term orientated way. This paper outlines that the mechanisms to solve sovereign debt problems within the EMU are not only missing the right...

With the elimination of foreign exchange risk among the E.M.U.-member countries, the yield of, say, French benchmark government bonds (henceforth, the yield) should be equal to that of German bonds, plus some credit and liquidity premia. Since both premia are not likely to change substantially...

We investigate the effect of fiscal institutions such as the strength of the finance minister in the budget process and deficits on interest spreads contained in bond yields of the countries now belonging to the Eurozone. Deficits significantly increase risk premia measured by relative swap...

This paper presents a new approach for analysing the recent development of EMU sovereign bond spreads. Based on a GARCH-in-mean model originally used in the exchange rate target zone literature, spreads are decomposed into a risk premium, an expected loss component and a liquidity premium....