European Central Bank

We develop a framework underscoring the importance of incorporating natural capital into growth models and policy discussions, recognizing its role as a productive input and as a sourceof enjoyment. Both firms and the government face the trade-off between exploitation and conservation and can (but do not have to) engage in costly conservation. Firms optimally conserve natural capital to support future production but underinvest compared to the social optimum. Public conservation complements private action, shifting focus from current consumption to future growth.

We study how financial integration shapes the transmission of monetary policy to consumer prices and output in the euro area. Using local projections, we document that the effect of financial integration is continuous: greater integration systematically strengthens the pass-through of monetary policy. When integration falls to low levels—around the first quartile of its historical distribution— transmission to both prices and output becomes statistically and economically insignificant. The amplification pattern is pervasive across member states and more pronounced in peripheral economies.

This study examines how euro area banks factor pollution-induced biodiversity risks into lending decisions, using data from 832 banks and 5,000 major polluters. Our results show that banks are increasingly pricing these risks by adjusting loan-to-value ratios and interest rates. Banks adjust lending conditions in line with EU pollution and biodiversity protection legislation, particularly for companies with large pollution footprints near biodiversity-protected areas or those contributing to Environmental Quality Standards failures of downstream surface waters.

Can rising asset prices reduce wealth inequality? This paper builds a continuous-time heterogeneous-agent general equilibrium in which entrepreneurs hold risky private capital and traditional savers hold safe assets. Safe-asset expansions—via financial innovation, public debt, or a stable equity bubble—operate through a single pass-through: they lower entrepreneurs’ undiversified risk exposure, compress risk premia, and raise the interest rate.