Starting in June 2014, the European Central Bank (ECB) stepped up its monetary accommodation in order to counter a too prolonged period of low inflation in the euro area. This article offers a narrative of the monetary policy measures taken up to December 2016 and a review of the effects of...

Markets for securitized assets were characterized by high liquidity prior to the recent financial crisis and by a sudden market dry-up at the onset of the crisis. A general equilibrium model with heterogeneous investment opportunities and information frictions predicts that, in boom periods or...

We study the role of monetary policy for the dynamics of U.S. mortgage debt, which is the largest component of household indebtedness. A timevarying parameter VAR model allows us to study the variation in the mortgage debt sensitivity to monetary policy. We find that an identically-sized policy...

Insufficient capital buffers of banks have been identified as one main cause for the large systemic effects of the recent financial crisis. Although higher capital is no panacea, it yet features prominently in proposals for regulatory reform. But how do increased capital requirements affect...

Insufficient capital buffers of banks have been identified as one main cause for the large systemic effects of the recent financial crisis. Although higher capital is no panacea, it yet features prominently in proposals for regulatory reform. But how do increased capital requirements affect...

A hybrid standard macro model is supplemented by an explicit analysis of bank lending, based on a five-position aggregative balance sheet. In the model's two versions credit supply is based on a leverage targeting rule or on simple optimisation, taking into account lending risks and funding...

Using BoC-GEM-Fin, a large-scale DSGE model with real, nominal and financial frictions featuring a banking sector, we explore the macroeconomic implications of various types of countercyclical bank capital regulations. Results suggest that countercyclical capital requirements have a significant...

Supervisors sometimes have to manage both the micro- and macro- prudential dimensions of bank stability. These may either conflict or complement each other. We analyze prudential supervision by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). We find evidence of micro-prudential concerns, measured as the...

This would seem an opportune moment to reshape banking systems in the Americas. But any effort to rethink and improve banking must acknowledge three major barriers. The first is a crisis of vision: there has been too little consideration of what kind of banking system would work best for...

The nineteenth-century economist Walter Bagehot maintained that in order to prevent bank panics, a central bank should provide liquidity at a very high rate of interest. However, most of the theoretical literature on liquidity provision suggests that central banks should lend at an interest rate...