The paper provides an analysis of central bank legislation in eight Southeastern European (SEE) countries. For this purpose, the paper uses the ECB classification and examines functional, institutional, personal and financial independence. Moreover, the paper sheds some light on the practical...

Foreign currency loans by unhedged borrowers are widespread in many regions of the world. Against this background, we study whether the demand for foreign currency loans is driven by a lack of knowledge about the exchange rate risk emanating from such loans. We employ individual-level survey...

The use of payment cards, either debit or credit, is becoming more and more widespread in developed economies. Nevertheless, the use of cash remains significant. We hypothesize that the lack of card acceptance at the point of sale is a key reason why cash continues to play an important role. We...

The paper analyzes why households hold sizeable shares of their assets in cash at home rather than at banks – a phenomenon that is widespread in many economies but for which information is scarce. Using survey data from ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries, I document the...

The Euro and Economic Stability assesses the euro area’s merits as a shelter and the merits of euro assets as a safe haven and reviews the case for rapid euro adoption from a post-crisis view. Policymakers and economists provide relevant lessons from euro area divergences for future euro...

Typically, depositors in transition countries react very sensitively to the safety of deposits. Faced with rising deposit outflows in October 2008, many transition countries were forced to extend the limits of deposit insurance coverage. Has this calmed private agents? Or has it caused more...

Germans are still very fond of using cash. Of all direct payments transactions in 2008, cash accounted for an astounding 82 % in terms of number and for 58 % in terms of value. With a dataset that combines transaction information with survey data on payment behaviour of German consumers, we...

By analysing almost 1000 money demand estimations this paper attempts to summarize the diverse findings of the literature on this topic. Using both descriptive statistics and meta-regressions, several stylized facts are derived about the two most prominent determinants of money demand income and...