Central bank announcements move financial markets. The response of inflation and growth expectations, on the other hand, is often small or even counterintuitive. Based on tick-by-tick futures prices on bonds and stock prices, I confirm these seemingly puzzling results for the euro area and...

In times of financial distress, central banks provide unlimited liquidity to avoid fire sales. In response, banks raise their demand for collateral assets, and the short-term scarcity of collateral securities leads to higher prices, the Fire Buy premium. To avoid collateral scarcity, central...

This paper seeks to inform about a feature of monetary policy that is largely overlooked, yet occupies a central role in modern monetary and financial systems, namely central bank collateral frameworks. Their importance can be understood by the observation that the money at the core of these...

The European Central Bank's asset purchase programs, while intended to stabilize the economy, may have unintended side effects on financial stability. This paper aims at gauging the effects on financial markets, the banking sector, and lending to non-financial firms. Using a structural vector...

This study assesses the European Central Bank’s (ECB) crisis management performance and potential for crisis resolution. The study investigates the institutional and functional constraints that delineate the ECB’s scope for policy action under crisis conditions, and how the bank has actually...

The European Central Bank (ECB) took many measures to combat the eurozone's rolling financial crisis. For providing desperately scarce dollars to eurozone banks, the ECB relied on the U.S. Federal Reserve. Using a novel econometric framework, we identify financial markets' response to the...

The paper gives an overview over issues concerning the role of financial stability in monetary policy. Historically, financial stability has figured highly among central banks ́objectives, with policy measures ranging from interest rate stabilization to serving as a lender of the last resort....

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the power of forward guidance at different horizons, shedding new light on the strength of the "forward guidance puzzle". Our identification strategy allows us to disentangle the change in future interest rates stemming from deviations from the...

Central banks responded with exceptional liquidity support during the financial crisis to prevent a systemic meltdown. They broadened their tool kit and extended liquidity support to nonbanks and key financial markets. Many want central banks to embrace this expanded role as "market maker of...

We examine the relationship between monetary policy operations and interbank borrowing and lending of funds using sovereign bonds as collateral. We first establish that, in the precrisis period, there are important but rather weak relations between these funding sources and that this...