Repo auctions are used to inject central bank funds against collateral into the banking sector. The ECB uses standard discriminatory auctions and hundreds of banks participate. The amount auctioned over the monthly reserve maintenance period is in principle exactly what banks collectively need...

This report summarises the findings of the task force. It is organised as follows. Section 2 starts with a discussion of the relevance of credit risk for central banks. It is followed by a short introduction to credit risk models, parameters and systems in Section 3, focusing on models used by...

This paper reviews the role and effects of the collateral framework which central banks, and in particular the Eurosystem, use in conducting temporary monetary policy operations. First, the paper explains the design of such a framework from the perspective of risk mitigation, which is the...

We study bidder behavior and performance in 53 main refinancing operations (quot;repo auctionsquot;) of the European Central Bank (ECB). The data set starts with the first auction after the ECB changed from fixed rate tenders to variable rate tenders. We find that private information and the...

The Eurosystem collateral framework (ESCF) has played a key role in the ECB monetary policy implementation since 1999. Moreover, the financial and sovereign debt crisis and with it the increased reliance of banks on central bank credit have underlined the importance of central bank collateral...

This paper analyses the roles of bank asset fire sales and recourse to the central bank as lender of last resort for the equilibrium debt structure of banks and the spread between bank lending rates and the central bank policy rate (the short term risk free rate). The asset side of banks is...

IT progress and its application to the financial industry have inspired central banks and academics to reflect about the merits of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) accessible to the broad public. This paper first briefly recalls the advantages that have been associated with CBDC and...

In some recent studies, the question of the origins of central banking has been revisited, suggesting that beyond Swedish and British central banking, also a number of earlier European continental institutions would have played an important role. However, it has often been difficult to access...