Banks in the euro area can generate high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) by borrowing central bank reserves from the Eurosystem against non-HQLA collateral. This paper quantifies the extent of this liquidity transformation and finds that on average EUR 0.92 of net HQLA are generated for each euro of credit provided by the Eurosystem. The paper then identifies...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of the demand for safe government debt to currency unhedged and hedged excess returns in a sample of US mutual funds. We find evidence of active rebalancing towards government bonds that offer relatively higher returns on an unhedged basis, in particular euro denominated securities. The size of the effect is large,...

We analyze, for the first time, how firms choose the currency in which they price transactions in international trade of services and investigate, using direct evidence, whether the US dollar (USD) plays a dominant role in services trade. Drawing on a new granular dataset on extra-European Union exports of Portuguese firms broken down by currency, we...

We study how millions of granular and weekly household scanner data combined with machine learning can help to improve the real-time nowcast of German inflation. Our nowcasting exercise targets three hierarchy levels of inflation: individual products, product groups, and headline inflation. At the individual product level, we construct a large set of...

We evaluate the effects of contagion and common exposure on banks’ capital through a regression design inspired by the structural VAR literature and derived from the balance sheet identity. Contagion can occur through direct exposures, fire sales, and market-based sentiment, while common exposures result from portfolio overlaps. We estimate the structural...

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between unconventional monetary policy and auction cycles in the euro area. Using proprietary data on purchases of public sector securities implemented by the Eurosystem, the paper examines the flow effects of asset purchase programmes on 10-year government bond yields in secondary markets around...