We use a unique data set that comprises for each German bank its recourse to the Eurosystem’s marginal lending facility (MLF) along with a large variety of detailed bank level data including the daily liquidity position to study the drivers of banks’ recourse to the LOLR facility for the period January 2004 to October 2010. We find that larger banks and banks with lower liquidity buffers and higher idiosyncratic liquidity risks make more frequent and extensive use of the LOLR support. These results not only hold for crises periods and episodes of tight money markets but also for tranquil periods, irrespective of the different monetary policy regimes. Our results have two implications: First, they suggest that riskier banks benefit more from the LOLR-facility, which might affect competition in the financial sector, promoting riskier banks and foster risk-taking behaviour. Second, data on banks’ reserve management can be a useful tool for microprudential supervision to derive high-frequency indicators for predicting liquidity shortages at the individual bank level.

We use a unique data set that comprises each Euro area bank’s daily recourse to the ECB’s marginal lending facility (MLF) and all its bids placed in the ECB’s main refinancing operations (MROs) that were conducted as variable rate tenders until October 2008. We show that the more aggressive a bank bids in a MRO, the higher is its propensity to subsequently draw on the MLF. Our results indicate that particularly with the beginning of the financial crisis, the interest rate paid by a bank in a variable rate tender auction strongly reflects its private value for liquidity, i.e. its opportunity costs of obtaining short-term funding in money markets, and thus, the risk premium it is charged in the private market. This suggests 1) that variable rate tender auctions preserve some market discipline and contain moral hazard issues, especially in times when a central bank is extending its liquidity provision and 2) that the average interest rate paid in an auction can be a useful indicator for bank supervisors to gauge a bank’s access to liquidity in money markets.

In this study, we examine the trading book of a major dealer in the European unsecured money market, focusing on the impact of a dealer’s own funding liquidity risk on the pricing of his interbank trades pre- and post- the 2007/08 financial crisis. Our analysis reveals two key insights: First, utilizing a panel model, we observe that heightened funding liquidity risks for the dealer generally affect his quoted prices for interbank liquidity. Second, while in tranquil periods this effect is statistically significant but economically less pronounced, the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to a strong liquidity pricing effect: a one standard deviation increase in the funding liquidity risk of the dealer translated to a 11 basis points higher mid-price for overnight liquidity. We thus find evidence that funding liquidity risks exacerbated the overall contraction of money market liquidity during this period.

Recent regulatory initiatives such as the European Deposit Insurance Scheme propose a change in the coverage and backing of deposit insurances. An assessment of these proposals requires a thorough understanding of what drives depositors’ withdrawal decisions. We show that Google searches for ‘deposit insurance’ and related strings reflect depositors’ fears and help to predict deposit shifts in the German banking sector from private banks to fully guaranteed public banks. After the introduction of blanket state guarantees for all deposits in the German banking system this fear-driven reallocation of deposits stopped. Our findings highlight that a heterogeneous insurance of deposits can lead to a sudden, fear-induced reallocation of deposits endangering the stability of the banking sector even in absence of redenomination risks.