Financial Stability in European Banking: The Role of Common Factors

In this paper, I investigate the development and determinants of CDS spreads for 18 major European banks between December 2001 and January 2004 using daily data. I demonstrate that two nonstationary common factors can be extracted from the data that together explain most CDS spread variation across time and across banks. The group of German banks plus a few Southern-European banks appear to systematically have high CDS spreads and to be relatively sensitive to changes in the underlying factors. The dominating first common factor impacts on all banks in a similar direction, suggesting strong market integration. However, the quantitatively less important second factor has opposite effects on credit spreads of Southern European versus Northern European banks, suggesting some remaining country-specific or region-specific credit risk. Finally, I show that the first common factor may indeed be interpreted as a measure of market conditions as it is cointegrated with the European P/E ratio and the 2-year nominal interest ratecredit default swap spreads, contagion, cointegration, factor analysis

Industries and the Bank Lending Effects of Bank Credit Demand and Monetary Policy in Germany

This paper presents evidence on the industry effects of bank lending in Germany and asks whether bank lending to single industries depends on industry-specific bank credit demand or on monetary policy as determinant of bank credit supply. To this end, we estimate individual bank lending functions for 17 manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries and five banking groups using quarterly bank balance sheet and bank lending data for the period 1992:1-2002:4. The evidence from dynamic panel data models illustrates that industry bank lending responds more to changes in industry-specific bank credit demand than to changes in monetary policy. We report evidence in favor of a credit channel through bank lending, but find the bank lending effects of monetary policy to be very sensitive to the choice of industry. The empirical results, hence, lend strong support to the existence of industry effects of bank lending. In view of this finding, we conclude that bank lending growth and monetary policy effectiveness crucially depend on the industry composition of bank credit portfolios.monetary economics ;

International linkages in the term structure of interest rates

Interest rates ; Banks and banking, International

Stock prices, inflation and real activity: a test of the Fama hypothesis, 1920-84

Also called: Inflation and stock prices: a long term viewInflation (Finance) ; Stock - Prices

Forecasting the money multiplier: implications for money stock control and economic activity

Forecasting ; Money supply

Comparing Multi-State Kalman Filter and ARIMA forecasts: an application to the money multiplier

This paper derives one-month ahead forecasts of the money (M I) multiplier using the Multi-State Kalman Filter and Box-Jenkins ARIMA methods. A comparison of the forecasts far the period 1980-82 reveals that the Multi-State Kalman Filter procedure was generally superior to the ARIMA procedure In terms of most summary statistics. The superiority is traced to the turbulent period of 1980-81. This paper also compares aggregate and component forecasts of the multiplier. The aggregate Multi-State Kalman Filter was the most accurate in predicting the one-month ahead money multiplier.

The Quest for Stability: the macro view

On September 3-4, 2009 SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economicsorganized the Colloquium "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium.asset prices, bubbles, financial institutions, global recession, interest rates, liquidity, monetary policy, regulation, stability, supervision.

What Drives ECB Monetary Policy?

In this paper I have analyzed ECB interest rate setting in the first 5 years of its existence. Contrary to popular belief and continuous ECB statements, the ECB has not acted has as an obsessed inflation fighter. By any measure, output considerations do play a significant role in the ECB's policy rule. If anything, the ECB has been on the loose side, especially since 2001, when taking economic development in the euro area as a whole as the starting point. Actual interest rates have been consistent with German (and to a lesser extent French) preferences, however. It suggests the ECB puts a dominant weight on German economic developments. Small peripheral countries receive too low weight rather than too high. In case the ECB actually focuses on euro area wide developments, its looseness is comparable to that of the Fed. In case ECB policy actually is geared towards Germany's preferences ­ or perhaps the average German-French preferences -- the ECB has been much closer to a standard Taylor-rule interest rate setting than the Fed. In that scenario, the Fed indeed has been much more aggressive in the lowering of its interest rates in the face of adverse economic shocks.

Dutch Corporate Liquidity Management: New Evidence on Aggregation

In this paper we investigate Dutch corporate liquidity management in general, and target adjustment behaviour in particular. To this purpose, we use a simple error correction model of corporate liquidity holdings applied to firm-level data for the period 1977-1997. We confirm the existence of long-run liquidity targets at the firm level. We also find that changes in liquidity holdings are driven by short-run shocks as well as the urge to converge towards targeted liquidity levels. The rate of target convergence is higher when we include more firm-specific information in the target. This result supports the idea that the degree of error in defining liquidity targets associates negatively with the observed rate of target convergence. It also suggests that the slow speeds of adjustment obtained in many macro studies on money demand are artefacts of aggregation bias.Corporate liquidity demand, Precautionary liquidity