The COVID-19 pandemic represented a logical Catch 22 scenario in the world of financial economics. The pandemic saw a sudden and unanticipated plunge in Money Velocity, Consumer Confidence, Employment and industrial output. At the same time, due to fiscal and monetary stimulus measures in form...

We study how foreign financial developments influence the conditional distribution of domestic GDP growth. Within a quantile regression setup, we propose a method to parsimoniously account for foreign vulnerabilities using bilateral-exposure weights when assessing downside macroeconomic risks....

How do banks respond to changes in capital requirements as a result of the stress tests? Does the disclosure of stress test results matter? To answer these questions, we study the impact of European stress tests on banks' lending, their corresponding risk-taking, the ensuing effect on their...

IFRS 9 substantially affects the financial sector by changing the impairment methodology for credit losses. This paper analyzes the implications of the change from IAS 39 to IFRS 9 in the context of bank resilience. We shed light on two effects. First, the "cliff-effect", which refers to sudden...

Risk analysis and scenario testing are two of the core activities carried out by economists at central banks. With the increasing adoption of machine learning to enhance decision-support systems, and the amount of collected data spiking, institutions provide countless use-cases for the...

Recent interest in 'Risk Management' has highlighted the relevance of Bayesian analysis for robust monetary-policy making. This paper sets out a comprehensive methodology for designing policy rules inspired by such considerations. We design rules that are robust with respect to model uncertainty...

Climate change can be a source of financial risk. This paper examines how credit rating agencies accepted by the Eurosystem incorporate climate change risk in their credit ratings. It also analyses how rating agencies disclose their assessments of climate change risks to rating users. The paper...

How do banks respond to changes in capital requirements as a result of the stress tests? Does the disclosure of stress test results matter? To answer these questions, we study the impact of European stress tests on banks' lending, their corresponding risk-taking, the ensuing effect on their...

How do banks respond to changes in capital requirements as a result of the stress tests? Does the disclosure of stress test results matter? To answer these questions, we study the impact of European stress tests on banks’ lending, their corresponding risk-taking, the ensuing effect on their...

The increasing size and concentration of official foreign exchange reserves after years of continued expansion, especially since the Asian crisis, have led to renewed interest in the way reserve management decisions are taken and in their possible impact on financial markets. Reserve management...