On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.

An unprecedented process of financial consolidation has taken place in the European Union over the past decade. Building on earlier US evidence, we examine the impact of strategic similarities between bidders and targets on post-merger financial performance. We find that, on average, bank...

We study the effect of interbank market integration on small firm finance in the build-up to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use a comprehensive data set that contains contract terms on individual loans to 6,047 firms across 14 European countries between 1998:01 and 2005:12. We account for...

This Article considers the scope of the Federal Reserve's emergency loan-making powers and analyzes their use during the recent financial crisis. It argues that many of the Fed's responses to the crisis exceeded the bounds of its statutory authority.In unusual and exigent circumstances, § 13(3)...

Bank compensation in distress is often regarded as special due to the prevalence of high bonus payments. I study European banks over the period 2014 to 2018 to determine how banks adjust compensation during distress in the post-crisis era. I use a novel hand-collected database to analyze...

This new wave of financial innovations has broad implications for society, banking, and central banking: Digital platforms can ease entry for financial services providers, increase transactional efficiency, and widen access to and participation in the financial system. They could also decrease...

This paper seeks to inform about a feature of monetary policy that is largely overlooked, yet occupies a central role in modern monetary and financial systems, namely central bank collateral frameworks. Their importance can be understood by the observation that the money at the core of these...

This paper studies the network structure and fragmentation of the Argentine interbank market. Both the unsecured (CALL) and the secured (REPO) markets are examined. The aim of this study is to understand their actual fragmentation, as well as its potential implications for monetary policy and...

Most theoretical central bank models use short horizons and focus on a single tradeoff. However, in reality central banks play complex, long horizon games and face more than one tradeoff. We account for these issues in a simple infinite horizon game with a novel tradeoff: higher rates deter...