On 10 January 2013 the ECB Governing Council decided “to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged” based on an assessment of a ‚contained‘ inflationary pressure and a weak economic activity, a contraction of real GDP in second and third quarter of 2012. Similar decisions have been taken...

Helicopter money has once been proposed as a theoretical thought experiment by Milton Friedman in order to elucidate the effect of money injections into the macroeconomy over time. However, some Euro area member states nowadays consider helicopter money, i.e. permanent Quantitative Easing (QE),...

This paper provides a first preliminary assessment of the recent two 3-year long-term refinancing operations (3Y LTROs) conducted by the ECB by putting them into a broader context. The perspective taken is that prevailing in the first half of the year 2012, directly after the path-breaking ECB...

On 10 January 2013 the ECB Governing Council decided “to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged” based on an assessment of a 'contained' inflationary pressure and a weak economic activity, a contraction of real GDP in second and third quarter of 2012. Similar decisions have been taken by...

This paper explores the effects of non-standard monetary policies on international yield relationships. Based on a descriptive analysis of international long-term yields, we find evidence that long-term rates have followed a global downward trend prior to as well as during the financial crisis....

Is the Euro area as a whole, or are individual Euro-area member countries facing a period of sustained lower economic growth, a phenomenon known as secular stagnation? We tackle this question by estimating equilibrium real interest rates and comparing them to actual real rates. Since the...

This article introduces a new measure to capture safe haven flows for twelve Euro area countries. Since those flows are suspected to alter the natural rate of interest, which is at the heart of the discussion whether certain countries face a period of secular stagnation, we estimate the natural...

The interest rate is generally considered as a monetary policy tool and, at the same time, via Tobin's q, as an important driver of macroeconomic investment. As an innovation, this paper derives the exact shape of the "hysteretic" impact of changes in the interest rate on macroeconomic...

The paper examines the bank lending activities of banks in a low interest rate environment. External financing of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the euro area primarily takes place via bank loans and not through capital markets. Based on the Bankscope database, bank balance sheet data is...

The interest rate represents an important monetary policy tool to steer investment in order to reach price stability. Therefore, implications of the exact form and magnitude of the interest rate-investment nexus for the European Central Bank’s effectiveness in a low interest rate environment...