This paper examines the recent behavior of sovereign interest rates in the euro area, focusing on the 10 year yield spreads relative to Germany for Italy and other euro area countries. Both previous analyses and the new evidence presented in the paper suggest that, in recent months, for several...

This paper discusses a wide range of indicators of the degree of integration of the euro area banking system. It is concerned with volume data, a less developed field of research compared with studies on prices/rates. We first set out a methodological framework, a mixture of elementary and more...

We examine the public debt management problem with respect to the maturity mix of new issues in a mean-variance framework. After identifying the main determinants of the long-run target (strategy), we focus on which interest rate conditions allow for a temporary deviation (tactics). The study is...