For the largest 55 German banks, we detect the presence of countercyclical yield seeking in the form of acquisition of high-yielding periphery bonds in the period from Q1 2008 to Q2 2011. This investment strategy is pursued by banks not subject to a bailout, banks characterised by high...

The decision-making process in the ECB's Governing Council remains opaque as the ECB, in contrast to many other central banks, does not publish the votes for or against a policy proposal. In this paper, we construct an index of dissent based on the ECB presidents' answers to journalists'...

Bilateral payment flows between banks may provide private information about a borrowing bank's liquidity position. This paper analyses whether private information on the bilateral payment flow of central bank reserves foster peer monitoring or whether the information is used to reduce search...

This paper studies the emergence of sovereign bond yield spreads in the Eurozone prior to the financial crisis. While spreads were close to zero in European government debt markets until the mid-2000s, they have persistently widened since then in many member states. We employ a...