We estimate the causal effect of natural catastrophes on financial depth. We focus on largest catastrophes in 1960–2016, employ synthetic control method to compute the counterfactual and use the private credit to GDP ratio as the measure of financial deepening. Our estimates show that the effects of natural catastrophes are sizable, statistically significant and long-lasting. We find that a decade after the catastrophe, credit/GDP ratio remains approximately 30% below its counterfactual. This result suggests that large-scale natural catastrophes severely undermine financial deepening in developing economies.

This paper examines the financial market impact of intermeeting communication of the members of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council (GC) using high frequency data between July 2008 and January 2014. Constructing a rich dataset of GC members’ public statements (speeches, conference discussions and media interviews) between monetary policy meetings allows us to investigate a detailed pattern of market responses to the ad-hoc communication of central bankers. Using least squares and quantile regressions, we document the impact of policymakers’ public statements on interest rates and the stock market with very little or no impact on exchange rates. In general, we find little evidence that the timing, sequencing or content of communication matters in immediate response. On the contrary, the results suggest that the market concentrates on the communication of key members of the committee.

We examine interest rate pass-through in the euro area over the 2008–2016 period and investigate the effects of financial market fragmentation, European Central Bank balance sheet policies and negative rates on the nature of pass-through. We use heterogeneous panel cointegration methods and bank interest rates for four different loan categories: small and large firm loans, housing loans and consumer loans. We find that interest rate pass-through is complete only for small firm loans; it is thus incomplete for other loan categories. Our results suggest that while interest rate pass-through has been weakened by higher sovereign credit risk, the European Central Bank's balance sheet policies helped curb these adverse effects on pass-through. Lower financial market fragmentation translated into lower lending rates. In addition, we fail to find evidence that bank interest rates became less responsive to market rates when market rates became negative.

We develop a comprehensive index of the transparency of central banks regarding their policy framework to safeguard financial stability for 110 countries from 2000 to 2011 and examine the determinants and effects of this transparency. We find that the degree of transparency increased in the 2000s, though it still varied greatly across the countries in our study. Our regression results suggest that the central banks that have a transparent monetary policy are more likely to show increased transparency in their framework for financial stability. More developed countries exhibit greater transparency, past episodes of high financial instability have a negative effect on transparency and the legal origin matters, too. In line with theoretical literature, our results also suggest a non-linear effect of central bank financial stability transparency on financial stability. If transparency is too high, it is not beneficial for financial stability.

We examine whether and how selected central banks responded to episodes of financial stress over the last three decades. We employ a recently developed monetary-policy rule estimation methodology which allows for time-varying response coefficients and corrects for endogeneity. This flexible framework applied to the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and Sweden, together with a new financial stress dataset developed by the International Monetary Fund, not only allows testing of whether central banks responded to financial stress, but also detects the periods and types of stress that were the most worrying for monetary authorities and quantifies the intensity of the policy response. Our findings suggest that central banks often change policy rates, mainly decreasing them in the face of high financial stress. However, the size of the policy response varies substantially over time as well as across countries, with the 2008–2009 financial crisis being the period of the most severe and generalized response. With regard to the specific components of financial stress, most central banks seemed to respond to stock-market stress and bank stress, while exchange-rate stress is found to drive the reaction of central banks only in more open economies.