This paper seeks to inform about a feature of monetary policy that is largely overlooked, yet occupies a central role in modern monetary and financial systems, namely central bank collateral frameworks. Their importance can be understood by the observation that the money at the core of these...

This paper investigates the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policies. It identifies an antigrowth bias in the bank's monetary policy approach: the ECB is quick to hike, but slow to ease. Similarly, while other players and institutional deficiencies share responsibility for the euro's...

This study assesses the European Central Bank’s (ECB) crisis management performance and potential for crisis resolution. The study investigates the institutional and functional constraints that delineate the ECB’s scope for policy action under crisis conditions, and how the bank has actually...

Central banks are under increased scrutiny because of the rapid growth in, and composition of, their balance sheets. Therefore, understanding the processes that shape these balance sheets and their consequences is crucial. We contribute by studying an extensive dataset of banks' liquidity uptake...

This paper examines the evolution of public support for the euro since its introduction as a virtual currency in 1999 , using a unique set of data not available for any other currency. We focus on the role of economic factors in determining the popularity o f the euro. We find that a majority of...

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...

A striking asymmetry defines the European Central Bank (ECB)’s approach to democratic accountability. Today’s ECB makes choices of a more complex and discretionary nature than originally envisaged for it by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. At the same time, the central bank continues to hew...

Since its inception, EMU adequacy to be an Optimal Currency Area was questioned, and, along with it, the homogeneous transmission of the monetary impulses across the Eurozone. Adopting a Bayesian Time-Varying parameter FAVAR model that fixes the flaws present in the existing literature and...