Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has become a major policy interest among global central banks. However, its introduction faces many challenges including those that are legal, technological and political in nature. In this paper, we summarize those challenges and add a few more that have not...

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has attracted considerable interest and its deployment on a global scale is imminent. However, digital currencies face several challenges. They include: legal, technological, and political considerations. We summarize those challenges and add a few more that...

The Eurosystem is mandated to safeguard price stability according to Article 127 TFEU. Based on a theoretical and policy-oriented approach, this article sheds light on a second public good with enormous practical relevance both for financial markets and institutions as well as for the general...

We evaluate the effects of targeted credit injections of the central bank in the euro area. The aggregate policy impacts of credit easing on financial markets, bank lending and key macroeconomic variables are measured with a novel identification approach based on high-frequency web search data....

The Eurosystem has been pursuing a crisis management policy for more than four years now. This policy aims primarily at maintaining financial stability in the euro area by providing vast liquidity support to commercial banks that are operating in nationally segmented banking systems. As a side...

This policy report analyzes one aspect of the sovereign-bank nexus: the feedback effects between banks and sovereigns derived from the holdings of sovereign debt in domestic banks. We study how this relationship evolved during the European debt crisis and how it responded to the implementation...

This paper begins by defining, and distinguishing between, money and finance, and addresses alternative ways of financing spending. We next examine the role played by financial institutions (e.g., banks) in the provision of finance. The role of government as both regulator of private...

Not since the Great Depression have monetary policy matters and institutions weighed so heavily in commercial, financial, and political arenas. Apart from the eurozone crisis and global monetary policy issues, for nearly two years all else has counted for little more than noise on a relative...

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...