What is the role of micro and macro factors in determining house prices? We address this question by analyzing data on housing and mortgages from a survey of about 2,000 Dutch households over the period 1993–2009. We focus on the determinants of house owners' subjective assessment of the value...

This paper compares market reactions to forecasts of the policy rate path provided by FOMC participants (“dots”) in the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) with those to forward guidance provided by the FOMC in its statements. We find that market expectations of the time to lift-off from...

Well developed financial markets are a necessary condition for a currency to play a role as a reserve currency. The introduction of the euro greatly improved the functioning of euro financial markets. This paper investigates whether euro financial markets have developed sufficiently to...

Over the last two decades, most European currencies have tended to weaken against the mark as the latter strengthened against the dollar. Moreover, the strength of the response of European cross-rates has tended to remain in the same order over time. I first set out the stylised facts of this...

This paper uses a new data set, based on Reuters news articles, to capture intervention that is perceived by FX traders and probability density functions (PDFs) estimated from option data to describe market expectations. We find that, between September 1993 and April 1996, traders viewed the...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between trading volumes, volatility and bid-ask spreads in foreign exchange markets. It uses a new data set that includes daily data on trading volumes for the dollar exchange rates of seven currencies from emerging market countries. The...

This paper reviews research carried out on exchange rates and monetary policy by central banks that participated at the Autumn Meeting of Central Bank Economists on "Exchange rates and monetary policy", which the BIS hosted on 28-29 October 2004. The first part of the paper focuses on the...

This paper examines episodes of current account adjustment in industrial countries over the past 30 years. We find that they were typically associated with a sizeable slowdown in domestic growth and a large exchange rate depreciation. There was no discernable change in the nature of capital...

We survey the literature on the efficacy of foreign exchange market intervention in emerging market countries, emphasising the differences with the literature on industrial countries. We then use official statistics on central bank intervention by the Czech National Bank in conjunction with...

Credit restrictions were used as a monetary policy instrument in the Netherlands from the 1960s to the early 1990s. We study the effects of credit restrictions being active on the balance sheet structure of banks and other financial institutions. We find that banks mainly responded to credit...