"The Chinese economy is now easily one of the most important and closely scrutinized economies in the world. Relatively minuscule changes in predictions of how the Chinese economy will perform can drive up or down stocks and the price of oil and other commodities. At the heart of how the Chinese...

This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are deemed...