Topic Europe

Crisis Stress for the Diversity of Financial Portfolios - Evidence from European Households

In this paper, we investigate how European households changed the diversity of their financial portfolios in response to the Great Financial and the subsequent European Debt Crisis. For this purpose we apply a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) approach estimated as a correlated random effects (CRE) model to six waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We find that households ...

Can the ECB affect consumer energy prices?

Modelling US and Euro Area Monetary Policy - An Overidentified Bayesian Proxy VAR approach

What if? The Economic Effects for Germany of a Stop of Energy Imports from Russia

Activation of New ECB Emergency Program TPI Has Not Yet Been Required

Since the beginning of 2022, monetary policy in the euro area has been gradually normalizing. As a result, bond yields of highly indebted countries such as Italy and Greece are rising more sharply than those of countries with less debt, such as Germany, a development referred to as bond market fragmentation. To ensure the coherent effectiveness of monetary policy on economic developments and, ultimately, ...

Real Effects of Financial Market Integration: Evidence from an ECB Collateral Framework Change

This paper studies the effects of harmonizing collateral policy in a monetary union. In 2007, the European Central Bank replaced national collateral lists with a single list specifying which assets euro area banks can pledge as collateral. Banks holding newly eligible assets experience a reduction in their cost of funding and increase loan supply compared to banks without such assets. The effect is ...

Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany

We investigate how internal distribution motives can interfere with the economic objectives of capital controls. In order to do this, we provide a model showing that elite capture can affect optimal debt repatriations and the management of official reserves under capital controls. Relying on these theoretical insights and a wealth of quantitative and qualitative historical evidence, we study one of ...

Macroeconomic Policy under Uncertainty and Inequality

Diese Arbeit umfasst drei Kapitel zur Debatte über makroökonomische Politik unter Unsicherheit und Ungleichheit. Das erste Kapitel zeigt auf, dass ein geringes Maß an Unsicherheit mit einer effektiveren Ausgabenpolitik einhergeht, und dass fiskalpolitische Ausgaben grundsätzlich ein wirksames Instrument zur Stabilisierung von Konjunkturzyklen sind. Das zweite Kapitel liefert Belege dafür, dass der ...

Sanctions against Russian Oligarchs also Affect Their Companies

In February 2022, the EU Commission announced economic sanctions against Russian oligarchs. The goal was to exert pressure on the Kremlin: initially to stop deploying troops to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and ultimately to end its attack on Ukraine. The present report investigates how these sanctions affect companies headed by Russian oligarchs. The empirical findings show that after sanctions ...

ECB Can Lower Fuel and Heating Costs by Increasing Interest Rates but Would Risk Economic Recovery

Inflation has been growing considerably since the middle of 2021, with rising energy prices driving the increase in particular. Since the end of February 2022, the trend has also been exacerbated by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. To keep prices stable, the European Central Bank must rein in its accommodative monetary policy. However, would doing so—by enacting an interest rate increase, for ...