This study examines the emergence of financial stability as a key police objective. It discusses the underlying trends in the financial system, as well as the role of finance in relation to money, the real economy and public policy. Financial stability is defined in terms of its ability to help...

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...

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...

This paper investigates the institutional set-up of European banking supervision against the backdrop of the current structure of the European banking market. Point of departure is that, in order to avoid incentive problems and white spots, the institutional structure of supervision should...

Using a multi-tier model of the housing market, we show that both starters and movers benefit from mortgage interest deduction for higher income groups. However, such tax favouring also tends to facilitate house price explosions, especially when interest rates are low and LTV-ratios are high....

The crisis has demonstrated that the ability of banks to absorb shocks needs to be strengthened. The financial tensions that have emerged repeatedly since 2007 could assume such serious proportions because the exposure of the banks was too high and too risky in relation to their capital...

This paper examines the financial behaviour of 77 Dutch pension funds during 2002-2005. Using microdata, we investigate differences across various types of funds. Both the asset mix and the degree of home bias are related to the size of pension funds: large institutions invest more in equity and...

We investigate the capital structure of 350 Dutch insurers during the period 1995-2005. Our main findings are: (1) a small company size, a mutual organisation, high profitability, large equity investments, and being a fire insurer, all contribute to higher solvency margins; (2) minimum solvency...

Using area-wide data, we perform a VAR analysis to simulate the responses of inflation and real output following monetary shocks in the EMU. We find that short-term interest rate shocks have a significant impact on real activity, but hardly on prices. M3 shows a perverse short-term response to a...