As the euro area has a predominantly bank-based financial system, changes in the composition and strength of banks’ balance sheets can have very sizeable implications for the transmission of monetary policy. This paper provides an overview of developments in banks’ balance sheets,...

Do borrowers demand less credit from banks with weak balance sheet positions? To answer this question we use novel bank-specific survey data matched with confidential balance sheet information on a large set of euro area banks. We find that, following a conventional monetary policy shock, bank...

The post-2008 period in the euro area was characterised by sharp dispersion in borrowing costs faced by firms, across both countries and firm types. This dispersion was an important manifestation of the financial fragmentation" which hampered the smooth transmission of accommodative monetary...

We document that there are strong complementarities between monetary policy and macroprudential policy in shaping the evolution of bank credit. We use a unique loanlevel dataset comprising multiple credit registers from several European countries and different types of loans, including corporate...