The negative interest rate policy (NIRP) has been in place in the euro area since June 2014. While the NIRP can provide additional monetary accommodation in the situation where the neutral rate of interest is most likely negative, there are also unintended consequences for banks’ profitability...

This paper describes developments in real long-term interest rates in the main OECD economies and surveys their various determinants. Real long-term government bond yields declined from the 1980s to very low levels in the recent period, though they have not reached the historical lows of the...

In the wake of the Great Recession, a massive monetary policy stimulus was provided in the main OECD economies. It helped to stabilise financial markets and avoid deflation. Nonetheless, GDP growth has been sluggish and in some countries lower than expected given the measures taken, and...

Following Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments before Congress that the FOMC may ‘take a step down in the pace of asset purchases if economic improvement appears to be sustained’, US 10-year interest rates picked up sharply and gross capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) reversed....

In the wake of the financial crisis there has been renewed focus on the importance of a country’s net external debt position in determining domestic interest rates and, relatedly, its vulnerability to a crisis. This paper extends the panel estimation of OECD countries described in Turner and...

This paper investigates the existence of significant spillovers from the housing sector onto the wider economy for the seven major OECD countries using Uhlig's (2005) agnostic identification procedure. This method allows a housing demand shock to be identified in a six-variable VAR model by...