Two different approaches to central banking in the aftermath of the crisis are contrasted. In the first one, labelled ‘New Normal', the monetary policy strategy is broadened to encompass such objectives as financial stability or full employment. Furthermore, the inflation target is raised and...

It has been argued in the literature that emergency liquidity injections should be conducted preferably in the form of open market operations. As we show in the present paper, this is not necessarily the case when liquidity may be alternatively used for speculative purposes during the crisis. In...

We study the problem of a leveraged investor that is forced to unwind a significant fraction of its portfolio in a collection of illiquid markets. It is shown that markets may become disrupted in response to a relatively small liquidity shock. As a consequence, the probability of default can be...

The liquidity of financial system plays a central role in systemic crises. In this paper, we show that the ECB haircut policies provided an important liquidity support to distressed financial institutions during the euro area sovereign debt turmoil. Using novel, micro data on the pool of...