After the dramatic rescue package for the euro area, the governing council of the European Central Bank decided to purchase European government bonds - to ensure an "orderly monetary policy transmission mechanism". Many observers argued that, by bond purchases, national fiscal policies could...

With a unique loan portfolio maintained by a top-20 universal bank in Germany, this study tests whether unconventional monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB) reduced corporate borrowing costs. We decompose corporate lending rates into refinancing costs, as determined by money...

We derive four sets of counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the time period 1999 to 2012. They approximate desirable national interest rates countries would have liked to implement if they could still conduct independent monetary policy. We find that...

This paper explores the potential effectiveness of the ECBś Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program in safeguarding an appropriate monetary policy transmission. Since the program aims at manipulating bank lending rates by conducting sovereign bond purchases on secondary markets, a stable...

This paper explores the potential effectiveness of the ECB s Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program in safeguarding an appropriate monetary policy transmission. Since the program aims at manipulating bank lending rates by conducting sovereign bond purchases on secondary markets, a stable...

After the dramatic rescue package for the euro area, the governing council of the European Central Bank decided to purchase European government bonds – to ensure an “orderly monetary policy transmission mechanism”. Many observers argued that, by bond purchases, national fiscal policies...

Due to the international dimension of the financial sector within the EU and beyond, domestically oriented macroprudential policies have the potential to create material cross-border spillover effects. This occasional paper provides a detailed overview of the academic and empirical literature on...

The prolonged crisis exposed the vulnerability of a monetary union without a banking union. The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which started operating in November 2014, is an essential step towards restoring banks to health and rebuilding trust in the banking system. The ECB is today...

Im Euroraum wird die Einführung eines digitalen Euro bereits seit Längerem diskutiert. Die Untersuchungsphase der Europäischen Zentralbank lief bereits seit Oktober 2021 und ging im Oktober 2023 in eine Vorbereitungsphase über. In anderen Ländern wird digitales Zentralbankgeld bereits...

The European Central Bank (ECB) wants to push ahead with the "digital euro" project. However, the digital euro is by nomeans the only and possibly not even a good (let alone the best) way to respond to the comprehensive change in the world of money. Interms of its reputation, the ECB must act...