This paper examines the optimal design of monetary policy in the European monetary union in the presence of structural asymmetries across union member countries. It derives analytically an optimal interest rate rule under commitment and studies the dependence of its coefficients on the...

This paper examines exchange rate pass-through in the euro area by accounting for the impact of exchange rate changes on exporting firms' market power, cost structure and competitiveness. An international oligopoly model where exporting firms simultaneously decide on their pricing and innovation...

This paper examines empirically the role of bank market power as an internal factor influencing banks' reaction in terms of lending and risk taking to monetary policy impulses. The analysis is carried out for the U.S. and euro-area banking sectors over the period 1997–2010. Market power is...

This paper examines exchange rate pass-through in the euro area by accounting for the impact of exchange rate changes on exporting firms' market power, cost structure and competitiveness. An international oligopoly model where exporting firms simultaneously decide on their pricing and innovation...

We study whether a pre-existing link between bank and sovereign credit risk biased euro area banks' sovereign debt portfolio choices during 2011Q4 and 2012Q1 - a period of exceptional increases in their domestic sovereign bond holdings. We find that banks whose creditworthiness is linked to that...

Negative interest rate policy (NIRP) is associated with a particular friction. The remuneration of banks´ retail deposits tends to be floored at zero, which limits the transmission of policy rate cuts to bank funding costs. We investigate whether this friction affects banks’ reactions under...

Since the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2003 strategy review, the importance of macro-financial amplification channels for monetary policy has increasingly gained recognition. This paper takes stock of this evolution and discusses the desirability of further incremental enhancements in the...