We explore the practical relevance from a supervisor's viewpoint of a recent but already popular market-based indicator of the systemic importance of financial institutions, the marginal expected shortfall (MES). The MES of an institution can be defined as its expected equity loss when the...

The recent boom in housing markets of most developed economies has spurred criticism that inflation targeting central banks may have neglected the build-up of financial imbalances. This paper provides a formal empirical test of such claims, using a standard program evaluation methodology to...

We show that set-up costs are a key determinant of the capital structure of young firms. Theoretically, when firms face high set-up costs, they can only be established by leveraging up and lengthening debt maturity. Empirically, we use a large sample of French firms to show that young firms have...

Using a semi-structural approach, we jointly estimate time-varying national natural real rates of interest for the four largest economies of the euro area over 1999-2016 and discuss the associated challenges for the single monetary policy. We find evidence of an increased dispersion of real...

Major central banks often accept pooled individual corporate loans as collateral in their refinancing operations with credit institutions. Such "eligible" loans to firms therefore provide a liquidity advantage to the banks that originate them. Banks may in turn pass on this advantage to the...

In this paper, we show that exporters react more strongly to a cut in tariffs by a distant countrywhen their banks have already been specializing in funding exports to this country. To make ourcase, we build upon a theoretical model where an informational advantage provided by theexporter's bank...

Henry Thornton (1760-1815), whose major work - An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain - is celebrating its bicentennary in 2002, is considered today to be one of the most prominent classical monetary economist, in particular with regard to its seminal...

In this article we estimate a time-varying " natural " rate of interest (TVNRI) for a synthetic euro area over the period 1979Q1-2002Q4 using a small backward-looking macroeconomic model, broadly following a methodology developed by Laubach and Williams (2003) for the United States. The Kalman...

We estimate the reaction function of monetary policy in the Euro area and derive the Taylor-type policy rule that a would-be ECB would have followed since the beginning of the European Monetary System (1979-2003). We first follow the standard GMM methodology developed by Clarida, Galí and...

The real interest rate gap or IRG - the gap between the short term real interest rate and its "natural" level - is a theoretical concept that has attracted much attention in central banks in recent years. This paper aims at clarifying its practical relevance for monetary policy in real time. For...