We utilize the Eurosystem securities lending facilities as a laboratory to investigate the impact of collateral scarcity on market functioning. The reduction of securities lending fees, implemented in November 2020, provides a natural experiment for our analyses. This policy change results in a...

Financial disasters to hedge funds, bank trading departments and individual speculative traders and investors seem to always occur because of non-diversification in all possible scenarios, being overbet and being hit by a bad scenario. Black swans are the worst type of bad scenario: unexpected...

This paper briefly assesses the effectiveness of the different non-standard monetary policy tools in the Euro Area. Its main focus is on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme which is praised by some as the ECB’s “magic wand”. Moreover, it discloses further possible unintended...

This paper briefly assesses the effectiveness of the different non-standard monetary policy tools in the Euro Area. Its main focus is on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme which is praised by some as the ECB’s “magic wand”. Moreover, it discloses further possible unintended...

Amid increasing regulation, structural changes of the market and Quantitative Easing as well as extremely low yields, concerns about the market liquidity of the Eurozone sovereign debt markets have been raised. We aim to quantify illiquidity risks, especially such related to liquidity dry-ups,...

To address the on-going crisis in the euro area it is proposed to introduce a scheme of conditional, overt monetary financing of public investment (COMFOPI). The inadequate response of monetary and fiscal policy is shown to explain the weak performance of the euro area compared with other...