This paper examines the recent behavior of sovereign interest rates in the euro area, focusing on the 10 year yield spreads relative to Germany for Italy and other euro area countries. Both previous analyses and the new evidence presented in the paper suggest that, in recent months, for several...

Term structure models are routinely used by central banks to assess the impact of their communication on market participants' views of future interest rate developments. However, recent studies have pointed out that traditional term structure models can provide misleading indications when policy...

We conduct an empirical analysis of sovereign bond spreads for a selected number of euro area countries. We analyze several methodologies to measure and to assess the relative importance of three components of sovereign spreads: credit premia, liquidity premia and convenience yields. We find...

The financing structure of the euro area economy has evolved since the global financial crisis with non-bank financial intermediation taking a more prominent role. This shift affects the transmission of monetary policy. Compared with banks, non-bank financial intermediaries are more responsive...

We propose a methodology to build and validate a composite indicator of the market liquidity of euro-area sovereign bonds. The indicator aggregates several metrics from different trading venues, with the aim of providing a comprehensive measurement of prevailing bond-market liquidity conditions...