The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between banking sector reform and bank performance - measured in terms of efficiency, total factor productivity growth and net interest margin - accounting for the effects through competition and bank risk-taking. To this end, we develop an...

Using the theoretical predictions of the Bernanke-Blinder (1988) model, we seek to examine the existence of a bank lending channel through the empirical identification of a loan supply function and to assess the impact of differential bank characteristics on banks’ ability to supply loans. To...

In this paper we suggest a VAR specification that proves to be successful in resolving the price puzzle featuring in VARs used for monetary policy analysis. We show that augmenting a standard VAR with a small number of variables that have forward-looking informational content is capable of...

This paper examines the optimal design of monetary policy in the European monetary union in the presence of structural asymmetries across union member countries. It derives analytically an optimal interest rate rule under commitment and studies the dependence of its coefficients on the...

The three-equation New-Keynesian model advocated by Woodford (2003) as a self-contained system on which to base monetary policy analysis is shown to be inconsistent in the sense that its long-run static equilibrium solution implies that the interest rate is determined from two of the system’s...