We study what makes government bonds a safe asset. Building on a sample of monthly changes in government bond yields in 40 advanced and emerging countries, we analyse the sensitivity of yields to country specific fundamentals interacted with changes in global risk (VIX). We find that inertia...

This study calibrates the term structure of risk premia before and during the 2007/2008 financial crisis using a new calibration approach based on credit default swaps. The risk premium term structure was flat before the crisis and downward sloping during the crisis. The instantaneous risk...

This paper proposes a new test for the asset pricing model of the exchange rate. It examines whether the way market analysts generate their forecasts is closer to the one implied by the asset pricing model, or to any of those implied by some alternative models. The asset pricing model is...

This paper proposes a new test for the asset pricing model of the exchange rate. It examines whether the way market analysts generate their forecasts is closer to the one implied by the asset pricing model, or to any of those implied by some alternative models. The asset pricing model is...

Capital flows into the euro area were particularly large in the mid-2000s and the share of foreign holdings of euro area securities increased substantially between the introduction of the euro and the outbreak of the global financial crisis. We show that the increase in foreign holdings of euro...

How much of the heterogeneity in bank loan pricing is explained by disparities in banks’ attitude towards risk? The answer to this question is not simple because there are only very weak proxies for gauging the degree of a bank’s risk aversion. We handle this constraint by means of a novel...

This paper proposes a new econometric approach to disentangle two distinct response patterns of the yield curve to monetary policy announcements. Based on cojumps in intraday tick-data of a short and long term interest rate, we develop a day-wise test that detects the occurrence of a significant...

We assess the ability of yield curve factors to predict risk premia in short-term interest rates and exchange rates across a large sample of major advanced economies. We find that the same tick-shaped linear combination of (relative) bond yields predicts risk premia in both short-term interest...

This paper examines monetary transmission and macroeconomic shocks in a medium scale macroeconomic model with costly banking estimated for euro area data. In addition to data on measures of real activity and prices, we include data on bank loans, loan rates, and reserves for the estimation of...

This paper examines the effects of monetary policy on the equity values of European banks. We identify monetary policy shocks by looking at changes in the EONIA one-month and two-year swap contract rates during narrow windows around the press statements and press conferences announcing monetary...