This paper argues that the loose monetary policy of two of the world’s most important financial institutions-the US Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank-were ultimately responsible for the outburst of global financial crisis of 2008 - 09. Unusually low interest rates in 2001 -...

In this paper we show how interbank market frictions can play an important role in propagating and enhancing the effects of shocks in a currency union, and discuss the efficacy of two unconventional policy measures; multi-period central bank refinance operations and large scale asset purchases....

On November 8, 2013, several members of the British House of Lords' Subcommittee A conducted a hearing at the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, on "Genuine Economic and Monetary Union and its Implications for the UK". Professors Otmar Issing and Jan Pieter Krahnen were called as expert witnesses. The...

Austria, Finland and Sweden became members of the EU in 1995. This paper examines how support for the euro and trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) have evolved in these three countries since their introduction at the turn of the century. Support for the euro in the two euroarea members...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue on international lending of last resort. Starting from debates about rescue operations and unconventional policies of major central banks in the contexts of the Global Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis, it draws attention to...

The functioning of multi-nation monetary unions with several central banks is conditioned by many factors and considerations, such as the capacity to deal with crises, the political will and operational skill to foster financial integration and to develop a mix of rules and discretion in the...

We present a two-country model with an enhanced banking sector featuring risky lending and cross-border interbank market frictions. We find that (i) the strength of the financial accelerator, when applied to banks operating under uncertainty in an interbank market, will critically depend on the...