While the established literature on central bank communication has traditionally dealt with communication of monetary policy messages to financial markets and the wider public, central bank communication on fiscal policy has so far received little attention. This paper empirically reviews the...

This paper reviews recent developments in the management of government debt in the euro area, covering both theoretical and practical aspects. It focuses on key aspects of debt management; the objectives of debt management, its organisation, the maturity of debt, inflation-indexation,...

This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

We derive a model in which a standard international capital asset pricing (ICAPM) model is nested within an ICAPM model with market imperfections. In the latter model an idiosyncratic stochastic factor affects the return of risky assets (over a risk-free rate) on top of the systematic component...

Testing for causality between government revenues and spending reveals useful information on the source of budgetary imbalances. This can form the basis for deciding, whether to base fiscal consolidation on spending cuts or on revenue increases. To this end, this paper conducts Granger-causality...

"Spreads between euro area government bond yields are related to short-term interest rates, which are in turn related to market liquidity, to cyclical conditions, and to investors' incentives to take risk. In theory, lower interest rates are associated with lower degrees of risk aversion and...

This paper presents an analysis of mortgage debt growth in the EU-15 countries. Mortgage debt has risen quickly in many countries in recent years, reaching historically very high levels that increasingly attract the attention from both researchers and policymakers. While there are some papers on...

This paper analyses some fiscal aspects of mortgage debt in the EU. It first describes the main fiscal instruments that governments use to affect mortgage-financed home-ownership. In the empirical part, real mortgage debt growth is analysed for 15 EU countries using pooled regressions. Fiscal...