This paper studies how banks' balance sheets and funding costs interact in the transmission of monetary-policy rates to banks' credit supply to firms. To do so, we use credit-registry data from Germany and Portugal together with the European Central Bank's policy-rate cuts in mid-2014. The...

We show that banks' lending exposure to firms with government procurement contracts can amplify the diabolic loop between sovereigns and banks. Using the fiscal austerity measures implemented during the 2010-2011 European sovereign debt crisis as a shock to government procurement, we find that...

This paper studies how banks' balance sheets and funding costs interact in the transmission of monetary-policy rates to banks' credit supply to firms. To do so, we use credit-registry data from Germany and Portugal together with the European Central Bank's policy-rate cuts in mid-2014. The...

This paper studies how banks' balance sheets and funding costs interact in the transmission of monetary-policy rates to banks' credit supply to firms. To do so, we use credit-registry data from Germany and Portugal together with the European Central Bank's policy-rate cuts in mid-2014. The...

Since the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2003 strategy review, the importance of macro-financial amplification channels for monetary policy has increasingly gained recognition. This paper takes stock of this evolution and discusses the desirability of further incremental enhancements in the...

Over the recent decades researchers in academia and central banks have developed early warning systems (EWS) designed to warn policy makers of potential future economic and financial crises. These EWS are based on diverse approaches and empirical models. In this paper we compare the performance...

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of bank competition on the cost of lending, in an environment of reduced information asymmetries between firms and banks. We construct a simple model linking the number of bank relationships, the cost of lending and bank competition. Banks are...

Understanding why some firms default, while others do not, is an important issue for the assessment of financial stability. In this domain, it may be interesting to understand if credit risk is driven mostly by idiosyncratic firm characteristics or by systematic factors, which simultaneously...