The 2007-2008 financial crisis demonstrated both the responsibilities that central bankers, alongside other actors, bear for turbulences of this kind as well as how economics can be used to provide central bankers and governments with the understanding and tools that they need to prevent the...

What shapes central banks' learning from the policy experiments of their peers? Both economic ideas and organizational interests play important roles. Thus, New Keynesian ideas led central banks to interpret Japan's experience with quantitative easing through the impact on risk spreads, although...

The euro area suffers from excessive public debt, which is the primary cause of the so-called fragmentation. It should be remedied by fiscal consolidation instead of the quasi-fiscal activities of the European Central Bank, which are inconsistent with its legal status, compromise its...

We investigate what happens when the fiscal authorities do not react to rising public debt so that the unpleasant task of fiscal sustainability falls upon the Central Bank (CB). In particular, we explore whether the CB's bond purchases in the secondary market can restore stability and...

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.

While many central banks around the world have pursued quantitative easing programmes in recent years responding to the weak inflation outlook, the European Central Bank (ECB) faces unique legal constraints with respect to its Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) launched in 2015. Most...

This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB...

This paper investigates whether the funding behaviour of euro area debt management offices (DMOs) changed with the start of the ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP). Our results show that (i) lower yield levels and (ii) PSPP purchases supported higher maturities at issuance. The former...

This policy report analyzes one aspect of the sovereign-bank nexus: the feedback effects between banks and sovereigns derived from the holdings of sovereign debt in domestic banks. We study how this relationship evolved during the European debt crisis and how it responded to the implementation...