The debate on the sustainability of public finances is closely related to the analysis of the financial and macroeconomic consequences of government debt accumulation. Focusing on the USA, Germany and Italy over the 1983-2003 period, the central issue addressed in this paper is how the...

Central bank informal communications became more frequent and acquired more mass media attention after the global financial crisis. Do investors react to the content (e.g., future expansionary or restrictive policy) of informal central bank communications? And especially, do investors have a...

This paper introduces a new indicator of current stress in the financial system as a whole named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped in accordance with standard definitions of systemic risk. The main innovative feature of the CISS is the...

Das vorliegende Papier geht der Frage nach, wie eng der deutsche Kapitalmarktzins über den Zeitraum von Mitte der 70er Jahre bis Anfang 1998 an die Zinsverhältnisse in den USA gebunden war. Häufig geäußerten Vennutungen folgend wird daneben überprüft, ob die "Auslandsabhängigkeit" des...

Financial stress indices quantify the current stress level in the financial system as a whole or major parts of it by compressing a number of indicators measuring stress in individual market segments into a composite indicator. Despite the fact that composite indicators have been used for other...

This paper analyses a macro-financial VAR model for the euro area that includes -- apart from conventional measures of output, inflation and monetary policy -- a composite indicator of systemic financial stress, namely the CISS index, and total assets of the ECB balance sheet capturing the...

This paper introduces a new indicator of contemporaneous stress in the financial system named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped according to standard definitions of systemic risk. The main methodological innovation of the CISS is the...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indices which measure the severity of financial crises on a continuous scale. Several index designs from the financial stress and systemic risk literature can be represented as special cases. We introduce an...