This occasional paper explores the Consolidated Banking Data (CBD), a key component of the ECB statistical toolbox for financial stability analysis. We show that non-consolidated, host-country Monetary Financial Institutions (MFI) balance sheet data, which constitutes a key source of input into...

In this paper we take a systematic look at recent trends in global protectionism and at the potential implications of a protectionist backlash for economic growth, using results from the recent economic literature and new model simulations. We find that there has so far been a moderate increase...

This paper examines the role of government wages in ensuring macroeconomic stability and competitiveness in the euro area. Recent empirical evidence suggests that government wage expenditure is subject to a pro-cyclical bias in most euro area countries and at the euro area aggregate level....

This study examines the European Commission’s 2011 call for advice to the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) on the improvement of the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORP) Directive (the “IORP Directive”). Specifically, it uses both the...

This essay reflects upon the relationship between the current theory of financial intermediation and real-world practice. Our critical analysis of this theory leads to several building blocks of a new theory of financial intermediation. Current financial intermediation theory builds on the...

The dissertation includes four studies broadly connected to the causes and consequences of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8 from a political economy perspective. Following the intro-duction, Chapter 2 analyzes the political roots of massive foreign reserves accumulation, which has...

This dissertation was written by Christopher Weber during his time as a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. It was handed in at the department of Economics at the LMU Munich in July 2016. The goal of the thesis is to...

Since 2008, excess liquidity - defined as the sum of holdings of central bank reserves in excess of reserve requirements and holdings of equivalent central bank deposits - has tended to accumulate in specific euro area countries and in a small, slowly changing group of credit institutions....

This paper discusses commercial banks' demand for central bank reserves under two alternative monetary policy framework configurations, namely: (i) an interest rate corridor system with scarce liquidity, and (ii) a floor system with ample liquidity. It outlines the interaction between the...

Motivated by alternative explanations of the financial crisis (e.g., Acharya and Richardson, 2010; Taylor, 2007), I study, first, repercussions between house price growth and household credit growth in Norway, and second, I analyse the impact of expansionary monetary policy on measures of bank...