At present, Western European banks are increasingly branching out into asset management as well as the consulting business, which cannot be influenced directly by monetary controls. We have therefore conducted a factor analysis of banks' balance-sheet items, and we have also plotted figures from...

We adopt an unobserved components time series model to extract financial cycles for the United States and the five largest euro area countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We find that credit, the credit-to-GDP ratio and house prices have medium-term cycles which share a few common statistical...

The financial cycle captures systematic patterns in the financial system and is closely related to the concept of procyclicality of systemic risk. This paper investigates the characteristics of financial cycles using a multivariate model-based filter. We extract cycles using an unobserved...

The 20th anniversary of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) offers an opportunity to look back on the ECB's record and learn lessons that can improve the conduct of policy in the future. This paper charts the way the ECB has defined, interpreted and applied its monetary policy framework – its...

A new way of modeling the dynamics of an exchange rate target zone is presented. In the presence of a single upper (resp. lower) target boundary, the exchange rate is precisely represented as the sum of a free float and a short (resp. long) position in a call (resp. put) option with strike price...

The paper quot;Numismatic Aspects of Introducing the Uniform European Union Currencyquot; deals with a subject causing a series of reactions for several years already not only in the European Union countries but also in those nonmember ones. The planed introduction of uniform currency, due to...

Deposit outflows and a decrease of interbank funding have been compensated by increased borrowing of Greek banks to the Eurosystem. Due to collateral eligibility constraints, most of this funding shifted to ELA. The ECB could raise the haircut rates on the collateral pledged by Greek banks to...

We examine the impact of the ECB's QE on Euro Area real GDP and core CPI with a Bayesian VAR, estimated on monthly data from 2012M6 to 2016M4. We assess the total impact via a counter-factual exercise, country-by-country and through alternative transmission channels. QE announcement shocks are...

We adopt an unobserved components time series model to extract financial cycles for the United States and the five largest euro area countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We find that credit, the credit-to-GDP ratio and house prices have medium-term cycles which share a few common statistical...

This paper discusses commercial banks’ demand for central bank reserves under two alternative monetary policy framework configurations, namely: (i) an interest rate corridor system with scarce liquidity, and (ii) a floor system with ample liquidity. It outlines the interaction between the...