Over the last decades, Dutch households have seen a strong growth in both their pension savings and equity in their homes. At the same time, their mortgage debts have also increased. On balance, their net wealth grew while their balance sheets also expanded. In view of the ageing population, the...

The Chinese banking sector has been in a state of flux in recent years. This stems from China's economic reform process and the continued strong economic growth the country has witnessed over the past few decades. At the turn of the country, the Chinese banking sector was technically bankrupt....

High-quality collateral is in greater demand than before the financial crisis, due to more prudent counterparty risk management as well as new regulations governing OTC derivatives and liquidity. Against this background financial institutions are currently reassessing their collateral...

The great financial crisis of 2007-2009 again illustrated the enormous costs of financial imbalances. Since the crisis, advanced economies have suffered a cumulative output loss of 33% relative to its pre-crisis, an increase in public debt amounting to 21% of GDP and direct fiscal costs...

The capital rules that banks have to comply with have become much more stringent since the financial crisis. The financial crisis brought home the fact that the capital buffers of banks were too small to absorb shocks. Financial aid from the state was required on a white scale to avoid more...

Wage formation can be seen as the outcome of bargaining between workers and employers about the distribution of output proceeds. Employers and workers each approach this from a different perspective: employers compare the development of total wages against the development of labour productivity...

The overall costs of the payment system to society are considerable. These costs depend on the relative usage of the available payment instruments, which differ in the costs that each entails to market participants in the payment chain. In the Netherlands, debit card payments have become less...

The financial crisis demonstrated severe shortcomings in existing global, European and national regulatory and supervisory frameworks for the financial system. Although most attention was paid to regulatory flaws, the failure to prevent a near collapse of the financial system also triggered a...

This paper investigates developments in the balance sheet and monetary policy of De Nederlandsche Bank in the period 1900-1998. We find that - given the institutional framework which is applicable - the composition of DNB's balance sheet is to a large extent endogenous to monetary and...

Despite the efforts that commercials banks have made to promote the use of debit cards and the introduction of new payment methods, the migration from cash to electronic payment methods is not proceeding as quickly as sometimes expected. Why do people pay by cash on one occasion and by bank card...