This paper presents a detailed set of new, quantity-based indicators of financial integration in the euro area. The indicators are based on granular data from securities holdings statistics and help us disentangle the main drivers of the portfolio changes observed since the financial crisis....

Previous work has documented a greater sensitivity of long-term government bond yields to fundamentals in Euro area stress countries during the euro crisis, but we know little about the driver(s) of regime-switches. Our estimates based on a panel smooth threshold regression model quantify and...

Using novel monthly data for 226 euro-area banks from 2007 to 2015, we investigate the causes and effects of banks' sovereign exposures during and after the euro crisis. First, in the vulnerable countries, the publicly owned, recently bailed out and less strongly capitalized banks reacted to...

Using the 2008-09 global financial crisis, this paper examines the role of different forms of international financial integration for asset price contagion in crisis times. Defining contagion as the transmission of financial market movements beyond the co-movements that would occur in...

At the 25th anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, this paper reviews the merits of introducing a safe sovereign asset for the eurozone. The triple euro area crisis showed the costly consequences of ignoring the "safety trilemma". Keeping a national safe sovereign asset (the German bund) as the...

Certain growth-promoting policies can have negative side-effects by increasing the vulnerability of economies to financial crises. Typical examples are greater openness to financial flows or more liberalised financial markets. This paper investigates whether the growth benefits of policy reforms...

This paper brings together the results from new empirical analysis on how – under international capital mobility – financial account structure and structural policies can contribute to financial stability. More specifically, the analysis has identified features of financial accounts and...

This paper examines how structural policies can influence a country's risk of suffering financial turmoil. Using a panel of 184 developed and emerging economies from 1970 to 2009, the empirical analysis examines which structural policies can affect financial stability by either shaping the...

This paper documents the use of derivatives by securitisation special purpose entities (SPEs), also known as financial vehicle corporations (FVCs), domiciled in Ireland using transaction-level data established by the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. We show that these entities...

This paper reviews and assesses financial stability challenges in countries preparing for EU membership, i.e. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. The paper focuses on the period since 2014 and on the banking sectors...