The introduction of the euro enabled French insurance companies to broadly diversify their investments in foreign debt securities, mainly issued by residents of other euro area countries. Their investments in equities, however, have been affected over the past two years by strong market volatility.

The global financial crisis forcefully highlighted the importance of developing mechanisms to curb the effects of large and volatile capital inflows on growth and financial stability in developing countries. It led the IMF to reconsider its long-standing rejection of capital controls. This paper...

In this paper, the authors analyze the influence of the international financial crisis on the current architecture of the CEE pension systems and their further reforms. As a consequence of the financial crisis, the very fragile pension reform has been subject of debate in the new member states...

In this report we discuss the factors driving the growth of the global financial sector that are considered by many authors (e.g. Toporowski,1999 and Orhangazi, 2008) to have precipitated the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Our analysis focuses on the behavior of the different types of financial...

The financial market of the Republic of Moldova has been characterized by a high degree of uncertainty during the last years. The political instability had its consequences causing disturbances, especially on the bank market. At the same time, the global financial crisis has had a direct impact...

Many observers have argued that the fall in RMBS prices during the crisis was partly caused by fire sales. We provide an explanation for why financial institutions may have engaged in fire sales using a unique dataset of RMBS transactions for insurance companies. We show that risk-sensitive...

This paper explores the link between monetary policies of large industrial countries and international credit cycles. Based on an overinvestment framework, we show that in the prevailing asymmetric world monetary system, monetary policies of large centre countries can fuel credit booms in...

It has recently been argued that intra-eurosystem claims and liabilities in the form of TARGET2 balances would raise fundamental issues within the European monetary union. This article provides a framework for the economic analysis of TARGET2 balances and discusses the key arguments behind this...

The recent financial crisis teaches important lessons regarding the lender-of-last resort function. Large swap lines extended in 2007-08 from the Federal Reserve to other central banks show that the classic concept of a national last-resort lender fails to address key vulnerabilities in a...

In the public and academic discussion on the payment system TARGET2, the high claims and liabilities of some euro area countries have mostly been associated with the financial crisis. The implicit assumption that TARGET2 balances would be close to zero without the financial crisis is both...