Central banks

Business as usual: bank climate commitments, lending, and engagement

This paper studies the impact of voluntary climate commitments by banks on their lending activity. We use administrative data on the universe of bank lending from 19 European countries. There is strong selection into commitments, with increased participation by the largest banks and banks with the most pre-existing exposure to high-polluting industries. Setting a commitment leads to a boost in a lender’s ESG rating. Lenders reduce credit in sectors they have targeted as high priority for decarbonization.

The impact of regulatory changes on rating behaviour

We examine rating behaviour after the introduction of new regulations regarding Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) in the European securitisation market. Employing a large sample of 12,469 ABS tranches issued between 1998 and 2018, we examine the information content of yield spreads of ABS at the issuance and compare the pre- and post-GFC periods. We find that the regulatory changes have been effective in tackling conflicts of interest between issuers and CRAs in securitisation. Rating catering seems to have disappeared in the post-GFC period.

US monetary policy is more powerful in low economic growth regimes

We use nonlinear empirical methods to uncover non-linearities in the propagation of monetary policy shocks. We find that the transmission on output, goods prices and asset prices is stronger in a low growth regime, contrary to the findings of Tenreyro and Thwaites (2016). The impact is stronger on private investment and durables and milder on the consumption of nondurable goods and services. In periods of low growth, a contractionary monetary policy implies lower expected Treasury rates and higher premia along the entire Treasury yield curve.

The impact of regulatory changes on rating behaviour

We examine rating behaviour after the introduction of new regulations regarding Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) in the European securitisation market. Employing a large sample of 12,469 ABS tranches issued between 1998 and 2018, we examine the information content of yield spreads of ABS at the issuance and compare the pre- and post-GFC periods. We find that the regulatory changes have been effective in tackling conflicts of interest between issuers and CRAs in securitisation. Rating catering seems to have disappeared in the post-GFC period.

US monetary policy is more powerful in low economic growth regimes

We use nonlinear empirical methods to uncover non-linearities in the propagation of monetary policy shocks. We find that the transmission on output, goods prices and asset prices is stronger in a low growth regime, contrary to the findings of Tenreyro and Thwaites (2016). The impact is stronger on private investment and durables and milder on the consumption of nondurable goods and services. In periods of low growth, a contractionary monetary policy implies lower expected Treasury rates and higher premia along the entire Treasury yield curve.

The euro as a global currency: a payments perspective

The global role of a currency can be measured in several ways, including by looking at its use in payments. After March 2023 the share of the euro in total Swift payment messages (i.e. payment instructions sent via the Swift network) appeared to drop. This coincided with a major infrastructure change in Europe – namely, the launch of the Eurosystem’s next-generation large-value payment system for the euro, T2, which replaced TARGET2 – and a move to a new Swift message standard.

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