There is a growing body of evidence that interest rate spreads in Africa are higher for big banks compared to small banks. One concern is that big banks might be using their market power to charge higher lending rates as they become larger, more efficient, and unchallenged. In contrast, several...

This paper examines the effects of macroeconomic policy and regulatory environment on mobile money usage. Specifically, we develop an autoregressive distributed lag model to investigate the effect of key macroeconomic variables and mobile money tax on mobile money usage in Uganda. Using monthly...

This study explores the effect of regulatory governance on financial stability using cross-sectional data from 55 countries. The findings show that regulatory governance and various subcomponents of regulatory governance are positively correlated with financial stability in the selected...

Tiny changes in the American monetary policy can have dramatic effects on the rest of the world because of dollar's double role of national and international currency. This is the Triffin dilemma. The paper shows how it works through three examples: price of commodities, dollarization, and the...

The current state of affairs in the euro area (EA) instills hope in economic recovery but also substantial concern. The crisis countries have made considerable, albeit quite uneven, progress in central areas of reform. Yet severe obstacles remain. Moreover, European policy makers have reformed...

This paper analyzes different government debt relief programs in the European Monetary Union. I build a model and study different options ranging from debt relief to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The analysis reveals the following: First, patient countries repay debt, while impatient...

Despite the progress made on the empirical front, normative analyses are still lacking when it comes to foreign currency intermediation (partial dollarization of the domestic banking system) and the ways to address its systemic risks implications. In this paper, we make a comprehensive analysis...

Bitcoin und andere virtuelle Währungen erfahren eine wachsende Bedeutung. Sie sind kein Geld, aber werden von einem größer werdenden Nutzerkreis als Zahlungsmittel und Vermögensanlage verwendet. Notenbanken und Aufsichtsbehörden haben aber Risiken identifi ziert und sehen...

The scope of this article is to discuss the implications of the Single Euro Payments Area from the perspective of the European SMEs. The current unpredictable and very challenging market situation has not fundamentally changed the fact that payment services need to continue modernization in...