Collateral plays a very important role in financial markets. Without easy access to high-quality collateral, dealers and market participants would find it more costly to trade, with a negative impact on market liquidity and the real economy through increased financing costs. The role of...

The funding mix of European firms is weighted heavily towards bank credit, which underscores the importance of efficient pass-through of monetary policy actions to lending rates faced by firms. Euro area pass-through has shifted from being relatively homogenous to being fragmented and incomplete...

This paper investigates whether OECD countries are facing secular stagnation. Secular stagnation is defined as a situation when policy interest rates bounded at zero fail to stimulate demand sufficiently, due to low or negative neutral real interest rates and low inflation, and when ensuing...

This paper describes developments in real long-term interest rates in the main OECD economies and surveys their various determinants. Real long-term government bond yields declined from the 1980s to very low levels in the recent period, though they have not reached the historical lows of the...

The negative interest rate policy (NIRP) has been in place in the euro area since June 2014. While the NIRP can provide additional monetary accommodation in the situation where the neutral rate of interest is most likely negative, there are also unintended consequences for banks’ profitability...

Using a wide range of models we document a protracted fall in the natural (or neutral) rate of interest in advanced economies, driven by ageing, waning productivity growth, a rise in mark-ups, and a surge in risk aversion in the wake of the global financial crisis. While our neutral rate...