Recent quantitative easing (QE) policies implemented over the course of the Great Recession by the major central banks have had a profound impact on the working of money markets, giving rise to large excess reserves and pushing down key interbank rates against their floor .the interest rate on...

Fluctuations in the aggregate balance sheets of financial intermediaries provide a window on the joint determination of asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. We document that financial intermediary balance sheets contain strong predictive power for future excess returns on a broad set of...

This paper studies how credit constraints develop over bank relationships. I analyze a unique dataset of matched loan application and loan contract information and measure credit constraints as the ratio of requested to granted loan amounts. I find that the most important determinants of...

Cross-border asset and liability holdings allow countries to insulate their consumption streams from idiosyncratic output shocks, i.e. consumption risk sharing. More cross-border asset holdings are associated with more risk sharing. By contrast, a bank’s interconnectedness is regarded as an...

Using data from 2000 to 2007, we investigate the effect of bank concentration on the entrepreneurial initiative in the Central and Eastern European transition countries for eight industrial sectors. We set up a simple structural model bywhich we test the relationship between banking market...

The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the natural resource curse, which refers to a negative link between natural resource abundance and economic growth. It shows empirically that resource-rich countries appear to have a less developed financial system and investigates a potential...

Using a unique administrative data set from a large German commercial bank, this paper aims to ascertain the role of financial advisors in individual portfolios. Following on the heels of the ongoing regulatory and political debate as to the merits of financial advice, we focus in this paper on...

The interplay between banks and the macroeconomy is of key importance for financial and economic stability. We analyze this link using a Factor Augmented Vector Autoregressive Model (FAVAR) which extends a standard VAR for the U.S. macroeconomy with a set of factors summarizing conditions in the...

The crisis on international financial markets that started in 2007 has shown the potential links between the financial sector and the real economy. Exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) have declined, presumably not only because of a lack of demand, but also because of restricted access of...

This paper reviews the state of confidence and trust in the Netherlands, with special attention to the financial sector. An attempt has been made to identify the factors that determine individual trust and confidence and to uncover connections between the various variables. Based on surveys over...